[POLL] Do you use/require a headphone jack on your phone?

Why wouldn't you prefer a headphone jack in your phone? It is yet another option for headphones that worst case you don't use. The only reason it has been removed is because it saves companies a few cents on the cost to build the product.

Credit where it's due, Bluetooth headphones have come a long way. I like the ones I have now. That said, removing the jack and micro SD slots was extremely anti consumer and they should come back.

This is my first phone without a headphone jack.

I miss it dearly.

nope, actually never used it. i've had and will continue having Bluetooth headphones

"VPN user voting is not allowed"

Lol.

I hate that I now have to use wireless earbuds that I now have to worry about charging, or that go flat at the most inopertune times....

Having something plugged into the usb-c port all day sounds like a recipe for a broken port.

Yes, because fuck having to charge and monitor another battery and the way they are trying to push higher price and disposable device.

The headphone jack would be less painful of a loss if phone manufacturers started adding a second USB-C port on top of the device. That way you wouldn't have to choose between charging your phone, listening to your game without lag and in privacy, or carry a dongle to try doing both things at the same time.

Nah, once I made the switch to Bluetooth 8 years ago or something. I have never gone back.

Actually I did once between Bluetooth headsets and the first time the cords got tangled I was like oh right that's why.

This poll kind of sucks for data gathering. You ask two different questions but there's only one set of answers. Even the first question alone asks if we use and/or require, which should be separate.

To answer though: I use my headphone adapter whenever I travel but don't have a regular headphone jack. A jack is not absolutely required for me to purchase a phone but the adapter is.

Yes. It's my way of voting with my wallet. I already have a few nice headphones and I'm not replacing them just because phone manufacturers are cheap and lazy.

Besides, I hate batteries. They always die at the most inconvenient time. And USB-c just for audio is way overkill.

Drag your preferred option to the top wtf is this UX...

I exclusively use wired earbuds because I fucking hate bluetooth as a technology

I hate to say but the poll is biased because you asked two questions that are not the same.

I currently have a phone without a jack, so the first question is obviously no. But the second question, would I prefer it, is a yes.

So there's a group of people who would prefer it, but it's not a deal breaker for them in your data, but they answered a different question than the headline.

Why isn't there an option for "the lack of a headphone jack is a complete deal breaker and I refuse to even consider a phone that doesn't have one?"

Yes! No.1 reason: microphone quality! I have to attend many calls every day and no Bluetooth headset (BT v.4 > 5.3, SPS, AAC, LDAC) has even come close to the simple quality of a ~25,-€ wired headset.

I use both. I want both. Bluetooth and headphone jack. Is this too much to ask?

Nice bullshit poll making 'Yes' the pre-selected choice and clicking an other option not changing it, even when its highlighted. Dragging choices is absolutely counterintuitive and actively misleading. Lets start a poll if people like murder and wonder about the 50/50 result at the end.

Opted not to vote because:

• biased leading questions
• strawpoll

Yes but this voting style is uhhh ... poop

I'm not a fan of BT headphones. It's three things (2 pods and the case that charges them) that you have to juggle and keep charged, vs just one that works whenever the device it's plugged into works. Wired headphones have a nice additional perk of discouraging people from interacting with you, while (at least anecdotally) the BT ones seem to lose that deterrent... and the venn diagram for times I want to use headphones and the times I don't want to deal with other people is just one crisp circle.

I always try to pick out a phone that has a 3.5mm jack, but that's becoming increasingly hard to do.

The poll/voting process is flawed & I don't like that.

That said, idk, I'm a blue collar working adult & the aux/wired connection isn't a necessity in my daily life. I can often, if not always, blast my music on an Ion loudspeaker. Car has Bluetooth. Home, I've got Bluetooth.

But that's just not the point for me; my phone has an aux port & I rarely use it. Used it to connect headphones on a walk last week. It's nice & I like having the option. Getting rid of it was purely an anti-consumer move, so needless, and obviously they can build it into the phones without detracting from battery or taking away from water resistance. Everything I've heard justifying removing aux is either a lie or an excuse.

I do prefer to use a headphone jack when my phone is the source of music for my amplified sound system and large room speakers.

Yes! I do still use the headphone jack. Bluetooth is trash and suffers from extreme latency and is not capable of the same quality of a wired connection.

I recently bought some bluetooth earphones (sony wf-c500) after many years of avoiding it. I was under the impression that things had improved but bluetooth is still as bad as I remember them. The audio latency on windows alone is unreal but another kettle of fish.

The real disgrace is that phone manufacturers removed the MicroSD card slot and then tried to justify it with weak excuses that didn't add up. MicroSD/SD cards have also recently become much quicker but nobody was using a MicroSD card as primary storage anyway so it was irrelevant and a weak argument at best. The only reason why phone manufacturers did remove it was to charge you much more for the large storage capacity phones. I would also say the price increase for that given storage space was and is also vastly more expensive than it actually is. In other words it is a cash grab. Its also of no coincidence that many phone manufacturers also now sell their own shitty Bluetooth headphones.

We can also sight the absence of charging cables/cords and wall plugs/power bricks. Not to mention that people these days are more privacy focused and tech savvy and begrudgingly use android or apple phones as they know with each update their privacy is being further eroded away. Whilst also being undermined by manufacturers with such things as planned obsolescence and them deliberately making it difficult if not impossible to repair your own phone.

...and phone manufacturers wonder why nobody wants to buy a phone anymore. Dumbasses! The truth is there are many more number of reasons why phones are garbage these days.

It's a nice to have and frankly aside from maybe water resistance there's no good reason to remove it. The 3.5mm jack has worked since the dawn of portable music, doesn't require often fickle pairing, and of significant issue to me at least doesn't have the potential for some future DRM scheme when the media companies decide you have to use their special app to play something. It's much the same reason I resisted HDMI for as long as possible.

That said, I do use wireless and probabbly would routinely even if the current phone did have a jack, but I would very much like to have it there just for the option to plug a wire in and attach it wherever I feel like. Wouldn't be the first time an aux port or RCA adapter came in handy.

I mostly use bluetooth, but the jack of my phone is not sitting there unused. I have wired headphones too, and I frequently use my phone as a microphone (because it is one) by connecting it to my computer by a jack cable.

Also, the next headphone of mine will probably be wired. Always keeping it charged is not really a problem, but the privacy aspect of Bluetooth has started to disturb me.
With a wired connection, you exactly know and control who connects to your devices, and at the same time you don't announce to the world that you are here.

Also, as I understand you can't use USB-C for audio and charging or data transfer at the same time, or even all 3 at the same time. Is that right?
That is critical functionality for me. Audio is not just entertainment, it could be an online meeting or other things too, and at one point I'll have to change my phone, or transfer files from it. However I don't have a USB-C phone so I can't test it, so I would appreciate if someone could confirm if this is actually the case.

I don't actively need a headphone jack on my phone but when I do need one I am annoyed that my phone does not have one.

I usually use wireless headphones nowadays, but there are still plenty of instances where I'm happy to have the headphone jack. Random parties where someone needs to play music via the aux cable, going somewhere with only some small wired headphones in my pocket because I dont have space, etc. For me it's still quite important that my next phone has one.

No. I had jumped to BT long before Apple* first dropped the hole. I hate cords; I hate the tangle and snagging. It's another lever with which to break a connection on the circuit board, and another ingress for water.

I know audio is better over cords, but I don't hear the difference, so the convenience won for me.

• I just discovered that my phone sometimes autocorrects "Apple" to "asshole." Fun.

Man, fuck this straw poll website. VPN voting is not allowed? I’m not even on a VPN.

In answer to your question, OP: No, it’s not a requirement for me. I would much prefer if I had one, but it’s not that important for me, I don’t often listen to music from my phone, and when I do I’m in the car, so I just play it over Bluetooth.

No headphone jack, no buy.

Yes and removable battery aswell.

Choosing a new phone has been rather easy, since about once every 5 years someone makes one model that loosely fits the criteria.

I use wireless headphones for everything, I have a Bluetooth to aux adapter for my car, and I still won't give up my headphone jack. It's so useful when the batteries in those things die, or when you hop in a friend's car and want to play something without fiddling with Bluetooth pairing.

I'm still mad that all these major manufacturers just blindly followed Apple and took it out.

Yes, I mostly use wireless earbuds but you never know when you have to use a wired earbuds like if you forget your case and your earbuds are out of charge.

Sorry, no VPN voting allowed

I found an ideal solution for this (in my opinion). A Bluetooth DAC. The specific one I have is the FiiO BTR5, but there are others.

For mine specifically, it has the standard 3.5mm output (TRS), as well as a TRRS balanced connection (I believe it's 2.5mm), and it can receive a signal from either Bluetooth or over USB from is USB C port.

The best feature of it is that I can charge it, while I'm using it. Which is something that most all-in-one Bluetooth headphones miss entirely. Even if they can be worn while plugged into a charger, many don't operate while they're being charged. All the true wireless (aka airpod style) by headphones, can't even be plugged into power directly, nor would it be possible to use them while they're charging in their case.

I can pick any headphones I want to use with it, provided they can operate from a 3.5mm connection (or something that can be adapted to 3.5) or by a balanced headphone connection.... Basically any ear-mounted sound generating devices that use a wire, can be used with a few exceptions.

I'm naturally very cautious, so I also have a charging dongle that has a 3.5mm audio jack on it as a backup. It can literally charge my phone and play sound at the same time... I'm tethered to my phone, which IMO, isn't ideal. With the BTR5, I can thread the wire through my shirt or something, and clip the unit to me or stuff it in a pocket and not worry about it. If I need my phone, I'm not fighting with how long (or short) my headphone cable is. The BTR also supports LDAC as well as aptX and related codecs, so it generally sounds excellent. It's a bit of a bear to get it set up, so I generally pull it out for long walk/work sessions away from my desk, or if I'm in a situation where I'm waiting for something to happen for a long time. I also have a handful of Bluetooth headphones, all of which have their (dis) advantages, and I flip between what I have as the need arises. I prefer the BTR5, but it's not always the best or most feasible given the situation.

IMO the BTR5 is better than just having a headphone plug on my phone, since the DAC and AMP in the device is known-good (many reviewers of audio stuff give it great ratings all around), and I can be untethered from my phone, so typing/scrolling/whatever is the same as normal; I'm not having to position my hand funny to avoid a bulky cable/adapter.

I had benchmarks that led me to the BTR5, and between it and the dongle, I have all my benchmarks covered.

My current phone does not have a jack and my previous one did. I would prefer to have it since there are times I don't need/want noise cancelling and bluetooth, but I have no choice but to run down my headphone batteries more.

Yes. Yes yes.

I use a headphone jack when I'm looking for a particular listening experience, which I have amp / DAC / etc for. If I'm using my phone to listen, I'm both not worried about sound quality, and don't want to be tethered to it by a cord.

I suppose if I were really arsed about it, I'd just get a USBC dongle. That said, I can see where that would be a hassle for people that prefer wired, and I think I've held only a couple of phones in my life that couldn't have just accommodated a headphone jack instead of saving the 1.5 cents it probably costs to leave it out.

I'll admit, my initial decision to just use wireless was more from seeing the writing on the wall; airpods sales would need to basically evaporate to get most of the manufacturers to course change at this point. Hell, the phone I'm currently using is the first I've had in years that even came with a charging brick in the box, so I'm assuming ditching the cable is next, followed by microtransactions to use various built in apps and services... like the phone dialer. Need to keep them margins infinitely expanding to appease shareholders.

I use the same wired earbuds on my desktop PC and on the go, so yes.

Prefer headphone jack so I don't have to charge my headphones. Current phone doesn't have one and is sad.

I was gifted a phone without a headphone jack after my last one died a few years back. I miss it all the time, remembering to charge bluetooth headphones and not losing bluetooth buds is tricky for me. So a lot of the time I just dont play music anymore. Very annoying.

I don't get it. This poll is largely in favor of jacks. I love my Bluetooth buds so much more. No more with I have to deal with broken wires. No more do I have to deal with moving my hand and accidentally snagging the cord, forcing my phone to the floor. No more do I have to deal with the cord creating noise as it rubs against the zipper of my jacket...

Wireless are more convenient for most use cases. I like the compactness of wireless earbuds, no tangled wires, and the charging case. I can even use just one bud at a time.

However, wired headphones have some advantages in rare use cases that wireless can't handle yet:

• connecting two headsets at once so 2 people han watch a movie on a plane. Bluetooth can stream sound to only one device at a time (at least on android). With Jack you can just use a splitter
• switching between devices easily. Just unplug and plug where you want it. With Bluetooth you have disconnect and reconnect.
• you can easily plug it into aux without any pairing process, just plug and play. With rental cars i noticed the device memory is often full and i have to remove a device before pairing. Not as seamless as audio jack for once off uses.

I don't mind missing audio jack, but at least make usb c dongles interchangeable. Iirc you can't use the same dongles on samsung and Pixel device. I ordered one that did not work.

I have excellent Bluetooth headphones that last multiple days on a single charge. You would think that makes the headphone jack just not important anymore. But I live in a neighborhood with a very satured frequency band which is so bad sometimes that the thing I'm listening to cuts out every few seconds.

Every time this happens I am so happy that I can just plug in a cable and I'm making sure this option will be available to me in future devices. Wireless is not always great.

I keep my bluetooth and location off so it easier and faster to just plug in headphones. For now I'm trying to get a phone with a jack. Hope they will keep making some.

I use a Samsung galaxy note 9 which has a Jack because i want a Jack. I replaced the screen twice after it broke just not to buy a diff phone. Fyi note 10 comes without a Jack

Yes, it goes well with my bluetooth/wired headphones, so even if the headphone's battery is low, I can still use it to listen to music.

Bluetooth has barely improved since it came out, wired audio is a solved problem.

It felt like a practical joke at first, but fr gimme my jack back.

I hate Bluetooth and refuse to use it whenever possible.

One plus nord CE 2 lite, 250 bucks, headphone jack And memory card.

I feel like every comment I'm reading assumes there's only two options - either headphone jack + wired headphones, or no headphone jack + Bluetooth.

I just use a USB-C dongle with a headphone jack on it. It'd be nice to have it built-in, sure, but the dongle is only a few bucks, small, doesn't really add a lot of extra stuff to carry if I'm already carrying headphones.

It's not a deal-breaker for my if a phone doesn't have a headphone jack because if it doesn't I can easily add one.