Except that you are not, there exists a 8-10$ dongle from apple for lightning to headphone and, i just had to check, there exists a usb-c to headphone dongle for the same price range if you happen to have the newest gen phone.

So instead it's a forced march to buy a new dongle if you happen to lose your cheap wired headphones/earbuds, assuming you just leave the dongle attached to the headphones/earbuds.

I can understand some grousing when the headphone jack was removed. I can't understand grousing still almost 8 years later. Buy the phone or don't buy the phone, they clearly aren't going to add the jack back.

They're so much better than what we had before that once you've used them for a few days it's hard to go back.

If you have to use Windows computers for work and use Microsoft Teams and all that, Samsung line works. If you want to connect with a Linux computer, Apple AirPods get terrible audio quality (and had same issue on Windows 11), but the Samsung Galaxy Buds (all of them) seem to work fine.