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Comment by dangoor | Hacker News Reader

There were two things that happened when Apple got rid of the headphone jack: (1) they added water resistance, (2) the phones got thinner. Plus, Apple had seen the trends heading toward wireless headphones.

They still included a dongle to give you a standard headphone jack.

While Apple could likely have gotten their water resistance even with the headphone jack, they couldn’t have made the phones as thin. People may disagree with the product choice, but I don’t see any reason to think that those weren’t the real reasons.

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> the phones got thinner

No. They didn't.

iPhone 5: 7.6 mm thin, 6: 7 mm

iPhone 7: 7.1 mm

> While Apple could likely have gotten their water resistance even with the headphone jack, they couldn’t have made the phones as thin.

Except that's a pretty obvious lie. Not just that the phones did not get thinner (or lighter), they stayed around the same thickness (+- 0.5 mm), while getting larger, much heavier and much more expensive. But also the thinnest Android phone with a 3.5 mm jack is just 5.1 mm thick, for example. Sony even made a waterproof phone that's 6.5 mm thin and still has a 3.5 mm jack, which is thinner than any iPhone ever.

Everything about this argumentation is wrong or an outright lie. The only reason they did this is because they could moneygrab through accessoires better when they eliminate standardized I/O.

Thank you! I stand corrected.

It looks like the reason most cited, in hindsight, for Apple removing it was to pave the way for a design without bezels and with more speakers

https://screenrant.com/why-apple-removed-the-headphone/ https://bgr.com/2017/10/06/pixel-2-headphone-jack-iphone-x-d...

Which is, indeed, a very different reason.

The explanation/excuse I recall seeing, was about space, not thickness. The headphone jack takes up space inside the phone that they’d rather put to other uses, like more battery for example. At least, that seems to make a bit more sense.

Yes it does. I think back then teardown pictures made the rounds where the innards of the two generations where virtually the same, except they added some component where the headphone jack used to be. And as far as smartphone components go, a 3.5 mm jack is pretty big; I'd guess about the volume of a camera module.

I don't know who started the thinness-jack meme, I suspect it was an explanation made up by people other than Apple, since Apple is usually more into omitting things instead of lying.

It would be very straightforward as well to simply come up with a new thinner analog headphone jack: maybe something balanced and with a magnetic connector since we’re at it?

I would argue the the camera “bump” means that the phone is not actually thinner anyway. Honesty means measuring thickness by it’s thickest point.

The phones are thicker now than they ever were with the headphone jack. In fact, the 7 was the last version to get thinner.

https://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/301929-image/iP...

Does anybody other than PR/marketing people care about phones being thinner than they are? It's just an excuse to not give better battery life which costs money.

The Samsung S10 line is water resistant with a headphone jack just fine.

Exactly. So is my LG G7. IP68, who wants better than that?

They "had seen the trends heading toward wireless headphones" or they wanted to create the trend and sell their own headphones? The second explanation seems much better.

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