They Don't Make ’Em Like That Any More: The 3.5mm Headphone Jack Socket
owl writes:
https://kevinboone.me/headphonejack.html
"It it ain't broke, replace it with something that is."
About five years ago I was suddenly, unexpectedly taken ill. Not just 'that's a bit nasty' ill, but 'prepare for the worst' ill. One thing that kept my spirits up in hospital, in the long watches of the night, was listening to comedy shows and audiobooks. I used my smartphone for this, since I had it with me, and a pair of old, wired headphones that I just had time to grab on my way to the ambulance.
I survived, of course, as evidenced by my continued ramblings on this site. But it was an unpleasant experience, made just a little better by a simple piece of technology: the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Now, of course, I do own wireless headphones and earbuds - I think almost everybody does. I also own several of those irritating USB dongles, that provide a 3.5mm port for devices that don't have one. But here's the problem: I can't use my Bluetooth earbuds while they're charging. And I can't easily charge my phone whilst it's connected to the USB dongle. In a critical-care facility, it's hard enough to find one free mains socket to connect a charger to, let alone two./blockquote.
[...] What makes the loss of the headphone jack so hard to bear is that it wasn't done for the consumer's benefit. To be sure, manufacturers made certain claims about the alleged benefits of losing the jack, but few of them stand up to much logical scrutiny.
[...] No. All of these weak excuses are simply distractions from the real reason Apple, Samsung, and Google dropped the headphone jack: they all have a substantial investment in the manufacture of wireless headphones.
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