Technology

I've been using a phone without a headphone jack for 3 years now with galaxy buds, if i didn't accidentally break the included usbc headset id be using that instead (even on pc) but i did so now i use the headphone jack on my wireless xbox controller on pc (connected to my pc via usb because my motherboard's audio makes noises when the pc is basically doing anything and echoes my mic into my left ear on windows (not a toggle in software or anything but said problem goes away if i power cycle pc by psu and then boot into linux)) and on phone i get to deal with Bluetooth and if i did have a usbc headset again i wouldn't be able to use it and charge the phone in a practical way (wireless charging is an option but my phone discharges faster than it changes wired (when connected to pc), wireless charging is even slower)

I use mine whenever I want to use my M50Xs. I tried buds, twice. Galaxy buds and Sony XM4s, the XM4s fell into a pool and the galaxy buds were simply misplaced. The galaxy buds sounded like absolute trash while the XM4 were actually decent, but why would I prefer them over the M50X? Now I'm switching from my note 9 to the pixel 8 pro and I don't know what I'll be doing about the lack of headphone jack.

My girlfriend has it even worse, her car only has AUX, no Bluetooth. I got her a Pixel 8 for Christmas, so she'll lose the only way to put music in her car. I also don't know what I'll be doing about that.

Honest take? We've got neural chips on our phones, we got cameras rivaling pro-level cameras, but we keep losing some very essential and basic features for no fucking reason. The headphone jack should've never been removed. Hell, the IR blaster should've never been removed, I'd kill for a high end phone with such things. Radio is another one, it's never going away as a means of communication, but fuck me for thinking I should have an antenna for radio in a box full of antennas for everything else, right?

Hey maybe I'm wrong about radio and it's just unfeasible to provide good quality signal for all things in a 6 inch box. Maybe I'm wrong about the IR blaster somehow even though TVs, LED stripes, and garage doors still use IR. But it's ridiculous to force no headphone jack as a trend that everyone just follows, all for pricier and shittier Bluetooth buds.

We used to be able to fit all this shit into phones back then, there's 0 reason to exclude them over size constraints now. If the reason is "butt fastah phowns", my 5 year old note 9 still feels more than snappy enough. Maybe we should spend more time making our shit efficient in order to use less space for heat dissipation, as well as better battery life or less battery size for the same battery life. Seriously who needs the kind of computing power found on phones nowadays? Is it really worth it to sacrifice basic QOL functionality for more speed?

Never for headphones, but I use an aux cable to connect to my amp and play along with music

3 times a week for about 2 hours each.

I do. Every day. Decent headphones that block a lot of outside noise but don’t need a battery.

Constantly thankful that I don’t have to find a Bluetooth setup.

Contentious part is that I listen to high quality (generally lossless) ripped music. Bluetooth and some adapters do weird things with compression and you can really hear it.

Multiple times a day. I have a wired pair of nice pair of headphones at my desk at work. Using cable is the simplest way to switch between phone and computer. In the car 3.5mm, at the gym I have iems I like to use. The other times I find it valuable is plane travel with steam deck and phone easily swapping audio source for whatever I am I'm the mood for. On planes I use circum-aural with active noise canceling. At work I have on-ear. I have different headphones for different situations.

Weekly, since i moved i don't really care how much noise i make, but i still use my wired headphones daily with my computer

I want it mostly for aux in various cars. Also neat to plug into PC speakers and such.

I'd pass up on fingerprint scanner and nfc before the jack tbh.

I bought wireless headphones about 4 years ago and haven't used wired since. Even when playing through speakers, in my car, and all that I just use Bluetooth.

I do, I like that I don't have to worry about charging

Every day.

While I'm walking/commuting, I have my headphones in and am listening to something, be it music, podcasts, or audiobooks. Even on days I don't have anywhere to go I'll go on a walk for about an hour and will be listening to something the whole time. I'd buy a phone without a camera before I bought one without a headphone jack.

Very very rarely. I have a cheap Bluetooth adapter in my car, and I don't regularly use headphones because everyone I care about is immediately annoyed when they see headphones over/in my ears.

If I had one, I would. I walked my kid to school recently and grabbed some wired ear buds for the walk back. I had to spend the walk back listening to boring nature and shit.

There is really no reason to not have one. It does not significantly increase the cost of the phone. The space saving excuse does not really hold water. If the Zenfone can fit one, then all the other gargantuan phones should be able to.

The last time I used it is about 10 years ago. Don’t miss it. Always hated the cables dangling around and pulling the headphones out of the ears. Wireless is just way more comfortable.

I stopped using wired headphones before I had a device without a headphone jack.

I found the cord infuriating, always seemed to get caught or tangled on things, always making sensitive skin contact (like just beneath my jawline) where I was forever readjusting it and sometimes the cords lifted the headphone out of my ear.

Conversely, I’ve had three pairs of wireless headphones. First pair didn’t like getting christened in the washing machine, second pair is still going strong and third pair are AirPod Pros I bought before a flight for the noise cancellation which are also going strong. Maybe I’ve outsmarted the whole of Apple’s engineering/marketing department but I’ve never felt like the sets I’ve had are underperforming on battery life and have no reason to buy sets to replace the working ones I have. The small conveniences, like not being tethered to my phone and freedom from cords, have absolutely made the change to wireless worth it to me.

The biggest and most obvious downside against wireless headphones is compatibility and price.

I never do, because it doesn't have one

I used to use it everyday on my old phone, new one doesn't have it and I hate using the dongle. My USB-C port is already wearing out from it

Never.

You’ll never hear from the people who don’t miss it because it’s nothing for us to talk about, so it seems like everyone only wants them back when in reality the vast majority don’t care.

Every evening in bed I hear audiobooks for a bit. Simple wired in-ears are good for laying on your side (only one side in) while they won't be lost that easily as wireless ear buds. Also they never need to be recharged

When I had a motorcycle. This was a daily use item. Now I only use them when out on walks/hiking

Used to back when I was in high school and it was more common, but bluetooth earbuds have gotten really good sound-wise that the hassle of wires/dac/adapter isn't worth it nowadays for me and basically everyone I know.

Wired headphones sound better usually but I think anyone claiming they're superior to bluetooth in every way is being disingenuous and hasn't tried modern buds.

I used to use mine almost every day with the same set of earbuds that I've had for probably close to a decade at this point. Since getting a phone without a jack, I listen to music significantly less now which is quite upsetting. I'm not the type to use the speaker on the phone since I've always seen that as rude, and the wireless earbuds that I have are just inconvenient to use at best and not the same quality compared to the wired ones (That's not to say that they're poor quality but I can absolutely tell the difference on my favourite songs).

I've been very tempted to just go back to my old phone once the contract on my current one has ended if modern phones are going to move away from 3.5mm jacks.

It has been an excellent universal standard for decades and the arguments about it being obsolete make no sense as it isn't being replaced by something superior, it's just being deleted entirely and a cumbersome workaround is being sold as a positive thing. The only real argument I can see for deleting the jack is that it saves the manufacturers a couple of pennies per unit.

I bought the USB c to 3.5mm adapter to keep using the headphones I bought back in 2008.

I have a headphone jack on my phone, I still use a USBC-aux dongle because it doesn't suck.

I have not owned a phone with a headphone jack in a long time.

Daily. Mostly Spotify and Youtube or when I don't want to listen to my wife.

another strong "yes" from me. my wired headset has much better speech quality than bluetooth ones. i didn't upgrade my phone since the new Pixels dropped the headphone jack, instead i fixed the screen and battery and keep it another couple of years

As replied under another comment :

I'll be honest... I bought a Poco F4 because the value for money it offered was amazing. Plus, I could unlock the bootloader and shift to a custom ROM whenever I wanted (literally as soon as I could lol. Hate MiUI).

This phone doesn't have a headphone jack, but I was willing to make the jump since my general use of headphones is not as much as earphones. My ears get sweaty or scratchy after more than an hour straight of earphones, and around the same for headphones.

As a result, my overall usage is limited. So, when I got my TWS (paid ₹2000 for an okay pair, no dual device pairing, okayish build quality for the case and an okayish connection. Sound was good tho.)

My situation meant I didn't really use them as much, although they go for almost 4hrs straight. And if I put them in the case, they go for weeks without needing a charge (case has a built-in battery of 1200mAh). So, whenever I think I need the case to charge I just set it up overnight. The only sad part is it doesn't have dual device pairing. I use my laptop and phone together and I'd kill for this feature, but my budget is thin atm.

I know it's not everybody's case, but this is my case. And while I miss the jack, I don't notice the lack of it. Audio quality is good enough for me. The wires were honestly the worst part of my wired experience anyway.

Absolutely use it at least weekly. My partner has Bluetooth wireless earbuds and they are always a problem - dropping connection, short and inconsistent battery life, dying at inopportune times, etc. They don't seem to even notice these issues because they've used wireless for so long, but it always drove me nuts everytime I tried switching.

Used mine every day until that phone's screen stopped responding and at the time none of the otherwise decent phones with decent prices had a jack. Headphone jack will remain a consideration in my next phone purchase once this one dies.

At least a few times a week, or when a new album releases when I'm not at home.

I use it daily, to connect my phone to my car AUX input and my various (very expensive) headphones.

Often enough to want it. I use it all the time in waiting rooms.

I use both practically daily.

I used to every day when I worked at a music shop and would play audio demos from it. The loss of the port made my job VERY difficult to do. Now that I work in a new field and have had to invest in some bluetooth earbuds, I don't find that I'd need the port very often, though the audiophile in me misses it sometimes, especially since bluetooth can be so unreliable sometimes. Don't miss the dangling cable, but the thing is, I can bluetooth earbud on a phone that has a 3.5mm jack too, the fact that they removed it from phones as a standard when it's such a cheap part to implement is baffling, especially when we're paying tons for phones. I can have 16gb RAM, and 8-cores, bud God forbid I want to be able to plug in a speaker and have my phone plugged into the charger at the same time, like a repurposed old phone for a home audio system or something.

Since I went bluetooth I have to charge constantly which is annoying. But at the same time while I was wired the cBle always got in the way in a way so the phone would fall on the street or some hard floor at least omce but sometimes twice a year and breal.

Since I'm on bluetooth I didn't break any screen in the last 5 years. I'M NOT GOING BACK TO WIRED, IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE.

If mine had one I would use it everyday. Idk why but I love wired headphones wah more than earbuds.

When the 3.5-less trend started setting in, I still had a phone with a headphone jack but started looking into wireless Bluetooth digital audio convertors just to prepare myself for the reality that it'll eventually be hard to find a phone that's both....good...and that I could plug my IEMs into.

One I settled on was the Radsone ES100. Besides allowing me to continue to use my headphones, one feature I really liked was its ability to store equalizer settings that could be used with any source, whether it be a Bluetooth device or one I plug the DAC into via USB. I found that there were equalizer apps for Android, but they kept getting killed because of memory limitations I guess. This device externalized the EQ.

Anyways some of the folks who made that branched off and made an even better version, the Qudelix 5K. It has the same features but does a better job of simultaneously connecting to multiple devices (but sadly it doesn't mix the sources...it just has a priority 😔😔😔😔). So I grabbed that upgrade and now the headphone side of my audio is locked in.

I found that getting a Bluetooth DAC helped me feel better about the trend of removing a standard audio connector from devices (which I gotta say, still makes no sense). It still frustrates me that I need to walk around with another device and the limitations of Bluetooth are annoying, but the cool thing is that when my last 3.5mm jack equip device (OnePlus 5) just stopped turning on, I just grabbed a random replacement phone (Pixel 5) and kept the same audio chain.

tl;dr - Consider just accepting that this is the trend for phones these days and try a portable Bluetooth (or even USB) DAC. When you find one you like, moving to any source will be less stressful. It won't matter if it has a headphone jack: you'll be able to focus on other features or even just get a less costly device that'll sound identical to what u know.

Never ever. It wasn't the reason why I got my current phone, but I thought I would use it at least sometimes. I don't.