The iPhone 6S has been out barely a couple of months, and the tech industry has already moved on to speculating for the next smartphone from the Apple company, the iPhone 7. Macotakara, a known source deep inside the tech rumor mill, has made a claim that the next iPhone would be ditching the headphone jack, all in favour of skimming off a few more millimetres off its body.
Now, this claim may seem a little preposterous at first and even down-right absurd to some people who have got used to the thought of having that industry-standard headphone jack on their phones. After all, almost everyone today listens to music on their phones and removing an integral part of the phone that lets it connect it to those incredibly tangle-able wires is, well, not the ideal way to go.
Yes, there is the option of having a bluetooth hands-free or a wireless headphone and yes, indeed, many people already use wireless gadgets like these to get around the nuisance of tangled wires, but, before you go about dreaming about a paper-thin iPhone, ask yourself, are there really enough people using bluetooth devices with their phones to not notice the lack of a headphone jack at all? Are wireless hands frees or headphones reliable enough to be chosen as the first choice for all users of the next iPhone?
The answer is a big NO. Bluetooth devices may be catching up in terms of reliability and pricing, but they are no where near good enough to replace their wired-counterparts for everyone. They just aren’t up to the task! With a wired hands free, all you have to do is plug it in, and that’s it. Hassle-free! You don’t have to charge, you don’t have to pair it up, you don’t have to turn it on/off, you don’t have to do anything!
None of those apply to a wireless device, and being an accessory that is used quite a few times a day, that is just not worth it, especially if all of this extra trouble is just for the sake of thinning down the phone, just a extra bit. Apple may even provide a workaround solution by using the charger port (like the 4.9 mm headphone jack-less Oppo R5) and provide an extra accessory for connecting a handsfree but knowing Apple, it would set you back a few more bucks.
The fact is, Apple is a trend-setter. Apple is the company which starts the big technology movements and like it or not, it really does have enough pull in the industry to be that trend-setter. Even if you don’t consider major breakthroughs by Apple like the iPhone or the iPad, you have to admit that they deserve some credit for ditching the DVD-ROMs in their laptops, introducing a battery-sealed and no-SD-card phone, and even more absurdly, introducing a Macbook Air this year with just one port for USB-C. While this may seem a little insane and well, rebellious when compared to industry standards, this approach still works and people keep buying their devices in millions.
But, the iPhone 6S is already incredibly thin at 7.1mm and, personally, I don’t see the point of making an even slimmer smartphone by sacrificing the headphone jack, at least not yet. If a Chinese company can fit a 3.5mm headphone jack in a 4.75mm smartphone, so can you, Apple!
So no thank you, Apple, we don’t want an iPhone 7 without a headphone jack! No Jony Ive, you may like to sacrifice a phone’s basic needs for the sake of designing perfection, but we just aren’t ready for it yet. We love our tangled set of wires. We love to lose them around, then buy another cheap handsfree for a few bucks and then lose that one too. Let us have this one please!
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