Headphone Jack Survives Another Year

It has been 3 years since Apple introduced the iPhone 7, the first phone to not have a 3.5 mm headphone port. There are plenty of people who still can't believe that they did that. The classic headphone connection was here for many generations. Not only is it universal but it's also practical. It didn't matter what type of headphones you had, cheap or expensive, you could connect all of them to your phone. But then came Apple and removed that universal headphone port from their iPhones. And since then, we have seen other companies do that as well, including Google. However, not Samsung.

Samsung has decided to keep the headphone jack and use it as a compelling sales argument. What before was present on every phone, is now Samsung's exclusive feature. This isn't the first time that Samsung has rebelled. They are quite well known now for doing their own thing and ignoring other brands.

All Android smartphones used to come with a memory card slot. But when flash storage started to get cheaper, most companies dropped support for MicroSD cards. Not Samsung though. The freshly released Galaxy S10 still has a memory card slot for increasing the storage size!

This is most definitely one of the reasons why Samsung is the leading brand of smartphones. They simply listen to their customers. And it's obviously the customers who still want to use these features that certain companies call "outdated". Well I'm one of those people who want to use non wireless headphones. That's why the 3.5 mm port is important to me.

I understand that the 3.5 mm jack won't stay forever. Wireless headphones are becoming more popular and affordable. But I don't think that we have reached the point where we can simply drop the old standard. There are plenty of high end headphone companies that still produce them with cables. Especially the studio models. I'm glad that Samsung has acknowledged that and kept the port. At least for this year.