Counterpoint: I haven't ever plugged my phone in to charge. The USB C port is now full of lint and crud. It definitely wouldn't work for headphones with an adapter. A headphone jack would still work if I had one. If it didn't work a toothpick could clean it out. I have a stylus inside my phone instead which I use once every few months.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think phones should have any ports. A micro SD card spot next to the SIM card inside is everything necessary. Wireless charging doesn't require you to hold the phone and cable at the right angle for the charging to happen. Just drop it on the charger and forget about it. Hell, they build wireless chargers into couches and tables now. I have a portable speaker that does wireless charging. That's true wireless charging. I could charge my phone in a hurricane.

I know this is unpopular opinion but using the charging port for anything but charging or the occasional data transfer is unnecessary wear. I could never deal with "hold the charge cable at juuust the right angle" again. It starts going bad and you get to see it getting worse until you can't trust it charging and you buy the new phone you've been thinking about for months now. The USB C port in my phone is where I keep my collection of pocket detritus and I wouldn't miss it if it was gone.

Once again, remember folks, this is unpopular opinions. Which means this is a good post, not a bad one.

But why remove it? Having the option is more convenient then having an adapter, reduces e-waste and you never have to play the "Where the hell did I leave the dongle?" game ever again! 2.5mm sounds great in theory but the vast majority of stuff you'd listen to music on uses 3.5mm.

Solid unpopular opinion.

Not enough room for a 3.5mm audio port, but we absolutely must have a 50MP dual camera plus TOF sensor!

Counterpoint:

External DACs on multiple recent generations of Pixel devices frequently experience severe distortion and Google seems to not give a shit about fixing that.

I literally cannot use wired headphones or speakers with my phone even with relatively high end equipment without horrific audio glitches.

On top of all other issues, those fucking dongles wiring breaks really fast

Well, that's definitely an unpopular opinion.

For me, there are two reasons losing the aux port sucks. First, it means I have to pay extra for functionality I want. It's not like the phone is cheaper without the aux port so it's just more money out of pocket for me. Second, it means I have to keep track of a dongle. Something I'd be using nearly everyday.

The funny thing about battery size; they could make the phone 1mm thicker and you'd get way more battery capacity from that than removing an aux port.

Also, wireless sucks dick. May as well give my own unpopular opinion.

Dafuq kind of take is this?

notices what sub we're in

oh, I see. Carry on.

A 3.5mm AUX jack takes up a significant amount of space just to connect a few wires that could be connected through USB-C anyway, that space could be used for a bigger battery.

The USB-C is unavailable because its being used to keep the phone powered. Is your solution to force everyone to carry yet another dongle in the form of a splitter?

I disagree. My phone has perfectly acceptable battery life and a 3.5mm jack, I use it all day and get home with over 40% left every day. I need the jack to use my earbuds at work, and to listen to music in my car - and I'm gonna be honest with you something as small as an adapter WILL get lost by me. Everyone's got a different use case, and it might not be important for you, but your use case isn't everyone's.

Yeah.. I disagree. One only thing that I got to give to bluetooth headphones is dealing with the cable - sometimes it's just more preferable to have no wires, especially during sport activities.

I'm still on the lookout for the next phone with a headphone jack. I was so hoping for it to be the next fairphone, but sadly that's not it. (Old small ZenFone was perfect but software support of Asus is ass)

Fuck you, well done.

I ended up bying a phone without a jack. I got 2 dongles that split into a jack and a charging port, so i can charge in bed while watching videos. One of the jacks has static noise and whine, the other has i think some kind of digital to analog interface that cuts the sound conpletely when the audio is too low.

So i hear static or when i watch a video or listen to an audiobook, when there is a pause in speech i hear the sound cut out completely, or if a video has soft background music on it, it might not pick up on it at all.

It's very distracting.

And if you go online to buy a dongle, they dont really say what they have in them, or you dont know how your phone handles the conversion etc.

So I don't think "just buy a dongle" is the solution. It works but now i have all these problems i didnt have with my old phone that had a jack...

But the space for 3.5 jacks don’t take space away from bigger batteries? In most devices, the two are not directly adjacent to one another. And if anything, the removal of the jack is said to make the device thinner, which would mean a longer battery, if anything. Keeping the device thicker would allow for true bigger batteries since the space is there for the jack.