this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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And this is why people wanted headphone jacks... and also why corporations didn't want them.
I mean, there were legitimate technical issues with the standard, especially on smartphones, which is where they really got pushed out. Most other devices do have headphones jacks. If I get a laptop, it's probably got a headphones jack. Radios will have headphones jacks. Get a mixer, it's got a headphones jack. I don't think that the standard is going to vanish anytime soon in general.
I like headphones jacks. I have a ton of 1/8" and 1/4" devices and headphones that I happily use. But they weren't doing it for no reason.
From what I've read, the big, driving one that drove them out on smartphones was that the jack just takes up a lot more physical space in the phone than USB-C or Bluetooth. I'd rather just have a thicker phone, but a lot of people wouldn't, and if you're going all over the phone trying to figure out what to eject to buy more space, that's gonna be a big target. For people who do want a jack on smartphones, which invariably have USB-C, you can get a similar effect to having a headphones jack by just leaving a small USB-C audio interface with a headphones jack on the end of your headphones (one with a passthrough USB-C port if you also want to use the USB-C port for charging).
A second issue was that the standard didn't have a way to provide power (there was a now-dead extension from many years back, IIRC for MD players, that let a small amount of power be provided with an extra ring). That didn't matter for a long time, as long as your device could put out a strong enough signal to drive headphones of whatever impedance you had. But ANC has started to become popular now, and you need power for ANC. This is really the first time I think that there's a solid reason to want to power headphones.
The connection got shorted when plugging things in and out, which could result in loud sound on the membrane.
USB-C is designed so that the springy tensioning stuff that's there to keep the connection solid is on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord rather than the (expensive, hard to replace) device; I understand from past reading that this was a major reason that micro-USB replaced mini-USB. Instead of your device wearing out, the cord wears out. Not as much of an issue for headphones as mini-USB, but I think that it's probably fair to say that it's desirable to have the tensioning on the cord side.
On USB-C, the right part breaks. One irritation I have with USB-C is that it is...kind of flimsy. Like, it doesn't require that much force pushing on a plug sideways to damage a plug. However
and I don't know if this was a design goal for USB-C, though I suspect it was
my experience has been that if that happens, it's the plug on the (cheap, easy to replace) cord that gets damaged, not the device. I have a television with a headphones jack that I destroyed by tripping over a headphones cord once, because the headphones jack was nice and durable and let me tear components inside the television off. I've damaged several USB-C cables, but I've never damaged the device they're connected to while doing so.
On an interesting note, the standard is extremely old, probably one of the oldest data standards in general use today; the 1/4" mono standard was from phone switchboards in the 1800s.
EDIT: Also, one other perk of using USB-C instead of a built-in headphones jack on a smartphone is that if the DAC on your phone sucks, going the USB-C-audio-interface route means that you can use a different DAC. Can't really change the internal DAC. I don't know about other people, but last phone I had that did have an audio jack would let through a "wub wub wub" sound when I was charging it on USB off my car's 12V cigarette lighter adapter
dirty power, but USB power is often really dirty. Was really obnoxious when feeding my car's stereo via its AUX port. That's very much avoidable for the manufacturer by putting some filtering on the DAC's power supply, maybe needs a capacitor on the thing, but the phone manufacturer didn't do it, maybe to save space or money. That's not something that I can go fix. I eventually worked around it by getting a battery-powered Bluetooth receiver that had a 1/8" headphones jack, cutting the phone's DAC out of the equation. The phone's internal DAC worked fine when the phone wasn't charging, but I wanted to have the phone plugged in for (battery hungry) navigation stuff when I was driving.
What is ANC?
As @papertowels@mander.xyz said.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control
Historically, if you were in a noisy environment, you could get closed-back, circumaural headphones
headphones that fit around your ears and had a lot of sound-absorption padding
to help soak up the sound. I still use decent non-ANC circumaural headphones at home.
There are also some people who are more-willing to tolerate discomfort than I am who get in-ear buds, which block noise in their ear canal, and on top of that, fit ear protectors intended for industrial use, like 3M X5 Peltor ear protectors, which have even more passive sound absorption stuff than current circumaural headphones do, and are even larger.
That sort of thing works well on higher frequency sound, but not as well on low-frequency stuff, like engine noise, large fans, stuff like that.
ANC basically has microphones in your headphones, picks up on what sounds are showing up at your ear, and then tries to compute and play back a sound that produces destructive interference at your ear. That is, if you look at the sound waves, where the environmental sound is low pressure, it plays back high pressure signal, and when the environmental sound is high pressure, it plays back low pressure signal. It's not perfect, or it could make environmental sound totally inaudible. But high-end ANC headphones are pretty impressive these days. I have a pair of Sennheiser Momentum 4 headphones
good, though not the best ANC out there in 2025, and I don't personally recommend these for other reasons
and when they kick on, the headphones are designed to have the ANC fade in; same thing happens in reverse, fades out when you flip the ANC off. It sounds almost as if fans and the like around you are powering up and down when that happens, very eerie if you've never experienced it before. Even the sounds that it doesn't do so well on, like people talking, it significantly reduces in volume.
And ANC does best with the other side of the spectrum, the side that passive sound absorption doesn't
the low-frequency stuff, especially regular sounds like fans. So having both a lot of passive sound absorption and ANC on a given pair of headphones let the two work well together.
People often use cell phones in noisy environments, with a lot of people around, and ANC makes it a lot easier to hear music or whatever without background sound interfering. I think that it's very likely that people will, long term, mostly wind up using headphones with ANC (short of moving to something more elaborate like a direct brain interface or something). It's not really all that important if you're in a quiet environment, and I don't bother using ANC headphones on my desktop at home. But if you're in random environments
waiting a grocery store line, in a restaurant with music playing over the restaurant's speakers, on an airplane with the drone of the airplane engines, whatever
it really helps to reduce that background sound. ANC isn't that new. I think that I remember it mostly being billed as useful for airplane engine noise back when, which they're a good fit for. But it's gotten considerably better over the years. For me, in 2025, good ANC is something that I really want to have for smartphone use.
The problem is that in order to do ANC, you need at least a microphone, preferably an array, and somewhere you need to have a model of the sound transmission through the headphones and be running signal processing on the input sound to generate that output sound. In theory, you could do it on an attached computer if you had a fast data interface, but in practice, ANC-capable headphones are sold as self-contained units that handle all that themselves. So you gotta power the little computer in the headphones. That means that you probably have batteries and at least for full size headphones (rather than earbuds) you might as well stick a USB interface on them to charge them, even if the user is using Bluetooth for wireless connectivity. And if you've done that, it isn't much more circuitry to just let the headphones act as USB headphones, so in general, ANC headphones tend to also be USB-capable. My Momentum 4 headphones have all of Bluetooth, USB-C, and a traditional headphones interface, but...I just haven't really wound up using the headphones interface if I have the other options available on a given device. Might be convenient if I were using some device that only had headphones output. shrugs
Active noise cancelling - noise cancelling that doesn't just rely on making a seal between your ears and the earbuds/headphones.
I think this is a case where the corporations were telling people what they wanted rather than people really asking for thinner phones. Same thing with bezels, I don't know anyone who asked for the screen to go all the way to the edge (or worse, curve around onto the sides). Apple and Samsung said 'this is what people want' when in fact it was what their marketing department wanted because they wouldn't be able to sell the iGalaxy N+1 if it was slightly thicker or heavier than the iGalaxy N.
Fwiw, I want as much screen as possible. Why waste space?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have all that screen space and a headphone jack and higher capacity battery tho? You can have all that and more
Honestly I'd be happy with a phone sporting two USB C ports, one centered and one off to the side where the headphone jack used to be, both fully functional.
That's great and all but I'm not switching to Bluetooth headphones and I'm definitely not going to fiddle around with dongles every time I switch between listening on my phone and my PC. Phones are gigantic anyways; let my have my headphone jack. I don't think it's a coincidence that all these smartphone manufacturers that ditched the old standard will happily sell you shiny expensive disposable wireless earbuds.
as someone has been fiddling with dongles for years, it's not that bad, and you can just permanently connect your headphones to your dongle. the apple dongle is excellent and beyond enough for iems and a lot of headphones. I personally have one dongle + iems for my phone and another dongle + headphones for my PC, and that setup works really well for me. You might want to consider it. Otherwise, those big beefy Bluetooth headphones might be semi-repairable, and there are of course also Fairphone Bluetooth earbuds that are apparently fairly repairable (though I know nothing about those). At least you can replace the batteries and the ear tips or pads, and that's usually enough to last you a decade with these things.
No. Fuck that. My PC has a headphone jack, and I use it. I don't have a bunch of extra USB-C ports on the front of my computer. Modern phones have plenty of spaces for headphone jacks. They could put it there, they just don't want to.
I used a USB connection through my KVM to connect to one computer or the next. But it's just something to plug my headphones into the 3.5mm jack.
Since it never gets unplugged, it doesn't get lost; unlike all those "just have this snowflake dongle in one of all of your stuff so it can get lost monthly and you can buy another" people.
Again: my startac 7800 had a jack and it was tiny. Apple and Samsung have NO EXCUSE.
phones are already very full and dense, and a headphone jack is a very large component. plus, the Bluetooth is simply part of the small SoC, it's a microscopic size. That doesn't mean I prefer Bluetooth, but it makes some sense.
You sure?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-diy-hero-added-a-working-headphone-jack-to-an-iphone-7-plus/
I don't buy that excuse in the slightest. Especially when Sony phones still have headphone jacks on their flagship phones too.
Great post, thank you.
I lot of great points here, I would be on aboard if phone therefore had two USB-C ports as standard
I know someone who works somewhat high up at Apple and he told me another reason was that they really wanted to improve the water proofing.
That's just gaslighting. Other phones had audio jacks, water protection, and you didn't have to hold them funny.
My bro is a huge apple kool-aid guy and he spouts their dogma word-for-word.
Yeah. One Samsung flagship phone (before they went down the Apple way) had headphone jack and stylus but still had better IP rating than iPhone.
Exactly! So they can spy on us more!
No, the real reason is it saves a few pennies per phone. They can already spy on us through the internal mic.
It’s always about the money. Everyone else yelling about them spying, they’ll only do that if it makes them more money.
I'm not really sure that is the reason. I'm not saying I would put it past them, just that I really don't think it's necessary. Smart phone manufacturers have a million other ways they could spy on you if they wanted to. The U.S. Government already has the ability to know each and every thing you do on your phone, even if you never use Bluetooth. I think it's greed pure and simple. It probably cost's them a few pennies to add a physical jack and most people would lose their shit if a phone came out without Bluetooth capabilities, so they save those couple of pennies and put them into their greedy ass pockets.
That being said I have never bought a phone without one and never will as long as I have a choice. I do love my wireless headset though but I am also not too worried about being spied on (yet).
I'm 100% convinced that is why they stopped making batteries user replaceable though. In 2019 Edward Snowden did an interview with Wired magazine where he made the interviewer remove the battery from his phone as a condition of the interview. He explained that the U.S. Government can make it seem as if your device had been 'powered down' when in fact they can still listen to your conversations and transmit them back to the CIA or whatever other spooks that want to listen in. Shortly after than almost all manufactures stopped allowing you to remove the battery. Coincidence?
My current phone doesn't have a removable battery, because I literally couldn't find one in my price range that allowed you to do so.
The best advice if you don't want to be spied on is not to use a smartphone altogether or just do whatever you want to be kept secret away from the phone at the very least. Buy a Faraday bag and keep your phone in there if that's not an option.
Hum...
https://www.xatakaon.com/security/if-you-use-wired-headphones-youre-at-risk-theyre-the-ideal-scenario-for-hackers
The only time a hacker is going to target you like this is if you're an extremely high value target like a CEO or if you're in the crosshairs of a nation-state. The average hacker isn't going to waste this kind of effort to hack someone with $200 in their bank account and no power over anything or anyone.
Double post
Eh, you're assigning an awful lot of malice with no real reason. A smartphone manufacturer already has access to the kind of data exposed in this attack, regardless of whether the headphones were hooked up with wires or bluetooth.
Samsung, Apple, Xaomi, Huwaei or whoever else doesn't need some stupid BT vulnerability to know what attached devices like headphone are up too. They already have root level access to the phones hardware.