> I think I'm in the minority, but I haven't really missed the headphone jack in my iPhone 11

You don't miss it until you do. When you are trying to join a meeting and your bluetooth headset absolutely refuses to work (and yes, even the fancy Airpods Pro do that occasionally), you wish you had the ability to just plug in an old-fashioned, analog headset. Which you can pull easily, with no fuss, from many devices, including computers and gaming consoles. Quick, no pairing required. No battery issues.

Analog headphones are also very cheap(good if you are not in a rich country), and will always be cheaper than bluetooth headphones, as there is minimal hardware required. You can quickly pick one up even from a shady street seller and you know it will work(longevity might suffer, but again, cheap).

The only problem with the headphone jack is that it is a very old standard. It's big connector, and takes significant real state inside a phone.

> The only problem with the headphone jack is that it is a very old standard. It's big connector, and takes significant real state inside a phone.

The 2020 iPhone SE is much bigger than the 2016 iPhone SE and almost 50 % heavier. This argument seems invalid to me.

It is thinner, though, with more hardware inside of it.

The thicker 16 SE actually felt more comfortable than these thinner phones. And this is from someone who went SE to 11 pro.

It's 0.3 mm thinner, you'd be hard pressed to notice that even with a ruler in a side-to-side comparison.

Would a lightning dongle still work in these situations?

It should, but the issue then becomes finding the damn thing :-).

> a lot of people hated it, until it was a nonissue

While I got the Airpods Pro when they launched and loved them at first, the battery degradation and seemingly worse ANC performance has really irked me given their price. I've also tried using cheaper wireless earbuds, but their connectivity can be spotty. I know it's not the worst issue, but I do miss being able to take a pair of wired earbuds and use them freely between my laptop and phone and not have to worry about their battery lives.

how long did it take for the battery to start degrading? its odd how people never seem to mention that problem when they are taking about how great their bt headphones are

I think bluetooth receivers are the way to go. you get the wireless aspect for the most part and can change track/volume without having to take out your phone.

you can use it any headphones or earbuds you have

with the fiio one I own, you can charge it while using it so you are never caught if you are near a power source or have an external battery chargers. and if not then at least you can quickly switch to being directly plugged in

there's also a much better chance that I will be able to replace the battery at some point in the future. with bt headphones, they are so small that it would be almost impossible to take it apart successfully

I've only really noticed the degradation in the last month or so, and it's taken maybe ~1 hour off of their initial battery life which doesn't bode well for their longevity :/ I'll look into bluetooth receivers for next time, thank you for the rec!

Yeah, I hated the concept but then I picked up an iPhone 8 as the most reasonably-sized flagship I could find and willing to make sacrifices for the size.

It was basically a forced upgrade to bluetooth headphones. I bought some bluetooth over-ear ANC headphones like two weeks later and it really hasn't annoyed me at all since.

You're probably in the majority. One can work around the lack of a 3.5mm jack, it's just a minor pain.

The larger problem with modern phones is the form factor.

Might be that some people still remember the Bluetooth from 2010 or so.

These days, I charge my wireless headphones once a week. When I turn them on, they are connected before I have opened the music app. The connection is stable. When I stop playing sound on my phone and start sound on my laptop, they automatically switch to that. Their microphone is perfectly fine for calling people.

I'm sorry, but I don't think this is the case, at least not for me. I actually own a pair of Bluetooth earphones, which I use at the gym. They do well, I don't have to worry about the cable or accidentally hitting the phone in my pocket when picking up weights. They have a reliable connection, sound is decent.

But I have hundreds of dollars invested in good-quality wired headphones, plus wired earbuds, and I want to be able to use those with my phone without needing to re-spend that money. Plus, regardless of quality of the product, I'm occasionally a forgetful human. I've actually run out of juice mid-workout with my wireless set. Instead of not having music for the rest of my workout (I like music!), I simply walked over to my bag, pulled out my wired earbuds, and finished up.

Not having the ability to do that is a deal-breaker for me on a phone, and it's not something that can be fixed by improving the Bluetooth tech. While this is obviously anecdotal, I don't imagine I'm the only person who feels this way.

> Not having the ability to do that is a deal-breaker for me

The dongle is small enough to leave attached to your headphones and costs $9. It would be wasteful to include one with the phone, as most would be unused. Clearly you'd prefer a built-in jack, but you have a cheapish option to add this ability.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...

Saying you can leave a 3.5-to-lightning adapter attached to your headphones assumes that all of your other devices can do audio over lightning also. Realistically, it seems like you'd add or remove the dongle based on what devices you're attaching to, so you probably wouldn't want to actually leave it attached to your headphones.

That was my thinking as well. I honestly hated the lack of headphone jack.

After getting an iPhone XS from work - replacing my iPhone 5 - I found that I would actually just leave the adapter on my headset. If I ever used the headset for anything else I would take it off but immediately replug it after being done.

My conclusion is that it's been waaaaay less of an issue that I honestly expected it to be.

Seems what is needed is inverted Y adapter, with two inputs and one output and a switch.

> But I have hundreds of dollars invested in good-quality wired headphones, plus wired earbuds, and I want to be able to use those with my phone without needing to re-spend that money.

Why not just swap in a wireless cable?

In my experience with a fairly recent and expensive set of bluetooth headphones (Sennheiser Momentum 3), it works well most of the time, but in 5% of cases it does not. If you use your headphones a lot, those 5% get annoying very quickly.

Some issues I've noticed:

- My tv (flagship LG OLED) always has trouble connecting to the headphones. I usually have to turn them off and then back on again at least once. Macbook and iPhone rarely have trouble connecting. Connecting on Windows has always worked so far.

- When I'm connected to both my Windows laptop and my phone, in a skype conference on the laptop and get a call on my phone, the skype conference is automatically terminated. FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS. That's insane.

- To make the previous point even worse: except for the ringtone, the audio from incoming calls never even goes to the bluetooth headphones. The audio from outgoing calls does, however. This is all on an iPhone SE.

- Sometimes when I listen to music, or watch a video on a Windows machine, my bluetooth headphones will just pause the playback every couple of seconds. This only happens on Windows.

- If your headphones are connected to multiple devices, you have absolutely zero control over what is happening. You might be listening to music on your phone, but some notification from your computer will interrupt your playback even though the computer is set to silent.

I could go on and on and I've only been using bluetooth headphones for a month. There is a LOT of polish missing here. That being said, this could be a great technology and it's not too far off at the moment. There certainly are some advantages over wired headphones as well.

You aren’t in the minority. You are in the silent majority though. Most people -and really emphasizing most in terms of what people actually buy not what they complain about online- don’t care about a 3.5mm jack.

It’s gone, it’s never coming back. To that end, once iPhone goes USB-C it’ll accelerate this majority non-issue.

I don't think it's a good comparison for several reasons. 1) Those technologies were already not as heavily used when they were dropped. There are still tons of traditional headphones being manufactured and sold, even years after phones have started dropping them. 2) It's easy to leave an external drive at a desk for occasional use, it's much less convenient to carry a dongle everywhere since you likely want to use headphones on-the-go. 3) This is subjective, but floppy to cd-rom is clearly an upgrade, wireless to wired headphones is not. It adds syncing and battery life problems to an otherwise simple technology.

> Those technologies were already not as heavily used when they were dropped.

I'll give you it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but having lived through all there events professionally, I can tell you that's not how it was perceived at the time. At least, not around my offices :-)

If you're carrying headphones on the go, how much less convenient is it to carry those same headphones with the adapter on them? I would argue it's exactly the same level of convenience.

Much less convenient. My wired IEM-style earbuds are smaller and lighter than most dongles I've seen.

That's BS. The Apple adapter is 3 inches long. You can leave it attached and it's no different than carrying the headphones/earbuds themselves.

How, in any way, is that "much less convenient"?

Bluetooth earphones mic quality is absolute ass, and has huge delay. You can tell who has bluetooth earphones (no matter the brand) on every call.

I still have a 6s with a headphone jack. I don't use headphones much, but do plug it into our cars (admittedly not as much of an issue lately). One has no bluetooth, one has incompatible bluetooth. Neither have USB input. Both are likely to last at least ten more years. One adapter per car is not going to be the end of the world, but it is an annoyance.

3.5 floppy and CD-ROM are replaced by something that does everything its predecessor does and better. Whereas bluetooth headphones are not 1:1 replacement of analog headphones. e.g. they have a battery, their audio quality is worse.

That's one more battery to manage. Perhaps a better comparison is wireless mouse or keyboard.

It’s unlikely people buying cheapest phone is going to get expensive Bluetooth headphones...

I realized I was not going to miss my headphone jack when I plugged in headphones and they didn’t work. Realized I hadn’t plugged in headphones for several months.

Ugh, this is not at all a valid comparison. It's extremely tired, too.

The phone MUST create analog audio signals, to drive its own speaker. Denying customers a connector to access it is petty and offensive. Compounding that offense is requiring every listening device to now incorporate redundant D/A converters. Contrary to apologists saying that this enables better quality, it in fact results in wholly unpredictable quality.

Not to mention that your ears will ALWAYS require analog audio. So do billions of amplification devices around the world.

There's no excuse.