At this point in my life, I want fewer things to remember to charge, not more.
My wired earphones will never run out of “battery” in the middle of a flight.
I’m a complete grump about this stage of the headphones cycle.
I use Beats Flex headphones though. It’s a lot easier to just hang them around my neck and they don’t fall to the floor if they fall out my ear. They also last 12 hours.
Wired headphones are especially a pain when running,
A good 95 percent of cases where I've dropped my phone, it's been wired to a pair of headphones and the wire snagged.
I moved to wireless about a decade ago and haven't looked back.
Certainly if you want to listen to music at decent quality, buy real headphones with a replaceable cable.
I had to pay a premium for a phone with an aux port, but extra features are worth it to me.
As for airpods, I don't get the hype, but thats mostly true for any Apple announcements apart from their CPUs. Yet they have the capitalization they have so they are doing something right, athough it feels its mostly marketing and "we are US" which means nothing to Europeans for good reasons unfortunately... I prefer higher quality customizable phone who respects me as user, higher quality cameras on it, higher quality in ear buds (even relatively mediocre Sennehiser Momentum 2 TW sounds miles and lightyears better, last longer, use HD codecs with anything ever created that has it too, which now means tons of devices, and pair flawlessly so far). I saw first hand my boss struggling and failing repeatedly to even pair his (back then) brand new Iphone 13 pro max pair with out-of-box charged airpods pro. WTFs all around the office, he was so ashamed... It was not the last time we all saw it from front seats, still happens quite regularly.
My wife has Garmin fenix watch. Apple watch are a bad joke if you have it for something else than showing off how "in" you are and not an "old boring fart", which seems mostly marketing/sales guys these days.
My wife, based on my recent recommendation which I am beginning to regret, just bought iphone 13 mini. Battery life is proper meh, seriously I expected better based on what online world says. The device with useless notch is fugly as hell, thick, heavy, screen has huge black borders - it looks like cheap chinese phone from cca 2015. OK, whatever, quality must be inside, and some is, some isn't.
You can't have a fucking unlocking pattern, because Apple knows better what you need, and you should learn what you actually want. Because 'security', so either full Face ID which she finds no-go because its her opinion and I respect it (and so should Apple), or some 6-digits idiotic code for every fucking unlock which is plain stupid and arrogant, or completely unsecured phone. No pattern draw like every other sane device since 2015 unless you want to straight jailbreak whole device and lose all warranty.
Fuck you Apple, I really, truly expected more from your devices in 2022, and so did my wife. Its not about how many things you get right (there are plenty of devices who get many things right), but where you fail hurts, especially when one is used to basic things working for many, many years.
At least resale value is quite good, especially when Apple decided to not continue their smallest line for whatever stupid reasons so this is last of the line, with A15 chip. Maybe she will eventually start liking it, but man I truly expected more from Apple since right now Samsungs seem a much better offer for people like her, if you are not counting pennies on resales