I don't think there's any "gain", but there's possibly not as much downside as you're thinking. I just leave my adaptor plugged into my headphones all the time, so it's really no different plugging the lighting connector in compared to plugging a 3.5mm audio connector. More hassle if you have multiple sets of headphones I suppose (and I do, but only one cabled set that I use regularly, and a bluetooth set as well).

There's still a minor downside, I can't charge my phone with my (wired) headphones plugged in - but I can get almost 2 days without charging my phone (an XR) so that's never bothered me at all.

For me, the camera on the iPhone XR is _totally_ worth the "downside" of Apple's "no audio jack" decision. That's a very personal thing (I want great low light camera performance for band/gig photos) and it's not something I'd ever tell somebody else is an important purchase decision for them. Same for you, there's no way I'd try to "sell no audio jack" to you. But I might advise that whatever _other_ feature a specific phone has for your personal use cases might possibly override the downsides of no headphone jack.

You, uh, get to work on your habit-forming because you now have more devices to charge?

I mean, practically, once they've managed to kill audio jacks we'll probably transition to HDCP-like DRM for audio so that you need Approved(tm) headphones to listen to your favourite pop music. Once we get there that will be the feature for you ...

I don't think there is one. I noticed recently that after losing the headphone jack my behavior changed and I almost never listen to music through headphones on my phone anymore. I'm not sure if that's a positive change.

It's incredibly stupid to drop them and yet here we are, with only a few phones with headphone jacks.

I'm not going to sell you on it, but I'm not the guy you responded to. Pixel 3, no head phone jack, never bothered me. I used bluetooth headphones when I still had a headphone jack.

> What's my gain here?

More choice of phones when buying one.