They didn't exactly say they needed the space "to make things thinner". They needed the space for other things like the new generation Taptic engine on iPhone 7 (which was the first phone without a headphone jack, and was also the same thickness as the 6 and 6s).

> They needed the space for other things like the new generation Taptic engine on iPhone 7

I mean, they didn't technically need the space - there was space for one guy to cram one into the bottom without removing the taptic thingy (although it did get shifted slightly) [1]

[1] super long video and not practical for an individual to do it, but shows that there was space and it could've been included. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA

Exactly. There's no engineering reason, and if there was, it would be embarrassing. Apple is a marketing and advertising company at this point which makes hardware and software to support that mission. So they marketed that they wanted or needed to remove the jack because <reasons>, when the real reason was that they wanted to sell you overpriced bluetooth headphones and leave no option otherwise.

They added a more sensitive camera that year as well as a brighter display with more colors, found interference, moved the display circuitry and cabling to the other side of the phone to compensate, and then that interfered with the headphone jack instead. So they took the headphone jack out instead of compromising the quality of the audio output.

If the guy who put the jack back in did any actual signal quality testing while playing video to stress the display, I'd be appreciative to have this theory put to rest, but I don't think he did.

I'm not claiming they couldn't have made it work, but having the port so close to the edge (on the curved corner) would create issues for mass production.