What I mean is, phone thickness was defined by the headphone port; it and its internal components were kind of a set quantity they had to build around. I can understand why getting rid of it takes the crutches off of phone design.
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Yeah, like phone design was so utterly compromised by this. Again, we have reached peak (and optimum) thinness. If there is a need for another form factor because thickness is a problem (a) I see no mass market use case and (b) well, go design a totally different form factor (Apple watch, anyone?) but given the need for a rectangular screen a few inches across diagonally, the constant change and pursuit of thinness is NOTHING but change for marketing’s sake. When will it be thin enough? When?
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Seriously? A quick google tells me that battery replacements for an original pixel from an authorized repair shop cost a mere $80. That’s far cheaper than a new phone. And if you cannot live without your phone for a few days while it’s getting its battery replaced, then how can you live for a few days while getting a smashed phone replaced?
When I need a new phone, I buy two of the same model (i buy used phones off ebay since we live on a fixed income, so this does not cost all that much). The second phone sits on my shelf waiting for it to be needed. When one gets sick, I have a backup while the first is off getting fixed.
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That’s true – now that the port has been removed. Again, they’re not trying to make it yet thinner, to my knowledge – though consumers keep saying that they want their phones Bigger, Thinner, and Lighter for reasons I do not understand – but the port defined exactly how thick a phone could be and how much room it had inside to work around the 3.5 components. I’m just stating a design factor.
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(Also @nungesser).
If you actually look at the thicknesses of every iphone model, the phones got thicker when they took out the headphone jack. Thickness has been slowly going upward ever since they introduced the lozenge shaped, “well used bar of soap” form factor back with the iphone 6.
Iphone 6: 6.9 mm
Iphone 6S: 7.1 mm
Iphone 7: 7.1 mm
Iphone 8: 7.3 mm
Iphone X: 7.7 mm
Iphone Xs: 7.7 mm
There’s a similar trajectory with the plus models (which have always been a tad thicker) – 7.1 mm for the 6+, to gradually increasing to 7.7 for the Xs max and 8.3 for the XR.
Apple iPhone product line comparison | Comparison tables - SocialCompare
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This made me almost spit out my coffee. That’s some next level America’s Test Kitchen type comparison data. 
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Interesting! Thanks for pointing that out. I think that at some point the larger size with the super-thin bodies was causing serious bending issues. I know that the internal components of the old phone port were taking up space as well.
The whole “I want the thinnest phone evar” thing always baffled me in any case, since everyone puts chunky cases on them anyway, so I never got the point.
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My headphones are this model KOSS PRO4AA. Still manufactured in USA. KOSS has a lifetime guarantee on them, so if the wire will breakk I’ll get a replacement one. Mine are six year old and are working perfectly with my hi-fi amplifier and turntable.
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Well colour me surprised that everything since (my) iPhone 6 was thicker. (No - I really am surprised, but my cynicism isn’t.) So somehow the headphone socket did not seem to be the constraint on thickness that you suggested. So I still don’t get the point of removing it.
So the only point I can think of for Apple to remove it is (a) Apple being their usual arseholes (see every different MacBook charging socket change ever - here’s an excuse to make you buy something else and not use common items you might use for multiple devices) and (b) Apple being their usual aresholes (see point (a) above and, also, now we can make the idiots buy wireless earphones and enough of the suckers will buy our overpriced ones …) or (c) Apple being their usual arseholes and removing useful sockets left right and centre even when they would fit in the device (see all previous standard USB sockets being removed from MAcBooks and again see point (a) 'now the suckers ned to buy more proprietary dongles and adapters to keep using all the stuff they thought they’d only need to by once). There’s probably a point (d) too but I may be getting repetitive. DId I mention that I think Apple have an areshole streak a mile wide in them?
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I’m terribly sorry that you aren’t understanding. The headphone socket was a legacy port that defined the minimum thickness of a phone as well as the arrangement of internal components (since it took up considerable internal space). Whether they make the phones thinner or thicker, there’s great reasons to get rid of it:
- removing the item that they have to design around, externally
- removing the item that they have to design around, internally
- removing a large literal hole in the phone to improve water/dirt resistance
- making audio devices that have better features & sound than the old 3.5 port could provide
By your own admission, you’re really cynical about this, so I know you’ll likely brush all of this off as “companies being their usual arseholes”, but I may as well state a few facts rather than rant.
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For some purposes, that is like removing entry doors or windows to a room, because the designer might find it easier to hang pictures on the increased wallspace.
I’m terribly sorry that you aren’t understanding.
This probably sounds a little un-nice to most ears. You were the one putting additional thinness as a reason for the change, not the poster you were replying to.
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Do you not play video games or participate in group video nights? I’m guessing the answer is no. Well, I have friends and let me tell ya, positional audio don’t work over Bluetooth very well.
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And they still didn’t understand. But thank you for pseudo moderating my tone!
It has been two years and I have still seen no evidence for this claimed better sound, other than press releases from Apple’s marketing bullshit department. All I want is one independent objective listening test!
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I had posted several, back when this was first announced, but I can’t really be arsed to do more headphone research. It’s not really so much a factor of “lightning ports sound better” – I don’t personally think there’s significant difference, except to audiophiles – but USB-C headphones do allow for things that RCA-port ones don’t, like true surround sound separation, multi channel audio, and power thru the cable (eliminating the need to have batteries in the headphones for noise cancelling).
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Thanks for the facts. Facts about things that I am not in the least concerned about, even after the goalposts have been moved away from thinness to other things:
- having to design around externally? What does that mean? Ooh, there’s an interruption in my purist designer’s ethos that demands clean unbroken lines irrespective of function?
- design around internally? As I’ve noted, thinness - and by implication smallness - are no longer a concern, They managed to fit it all in an iPhone 6 and that works just dandy - what else do they need to put in that needs all that space with greater urgency than the consumer’s most used sound device? And all the digital gubbins ought to be getting smaller, so what’s the issue?
- large hole? I don’t care about dirt or water resistance. Never found dirt in there to be a problem (had a mobile phone with a 3.5mm jack socket almost ever since they appeared) and really not looking for a military ‘tactical’ waterproofed phone, either. Stick a profiled rubber bung in the hole if people are worried, that would deal with most issues, I suspect.
- the only audio ‘feature’ I seek is to be able to listen with the various sets of both cheap and expensive headphones I have invested in, without having to buy, carry, lose etc. another effing ‘dongle’. Not sure what other ‘audio features’ are coming down the line that a 3.5mm jack actually prevents. If any exist they can use the whatever other port Apple also installs, can’t they? Sound quality? Well it’s been good enough for decades, with both full size and 3.5mm jacks. The jack is hardly AFAIK the constraining issue, compared to the sound processing hardware and software, surely? And we are talking headphones here, not driving a hi-fi sound system.
And what’s wrong with a rant, anyway?
Seriously, I do understand your facts, despite your comment to @tuhu. (Whose response I approve of.) But none of these facts are compelling enough to me to justify the removal of the 3.5mm jack.)
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It’s not obvious to me why people are so in love with cords.
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Wait until the entire industry decides you really don’t want that feature, then realise you’re screwed.
Oh hai mobile phone manufacturers, i’m really glad you decided for me that i don’t want accepatable battery life or replacable batteries and that apparrently i want thin phones at any cost, even though i don’t…*
*at the moment there is a workaround by getting chinese phones, i hope this lasts though…
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That plus they needed to add extra battery capacity. The battery watt hours column in the table I linked to shows an interesting pattern - capacity goes up with a new number, then goes down with the “s” revision, repeatedly. SOC efficiency improvements = shrink the battery and still get whatever target number they’re aiming at for battery life. New, more powerful SOC on the same process = need a bigger battery to hit the target.
Don’t think of the phone as a shape of certain volume, think of it as a collection of parts of a certain size that you have to fit together inside a given volume, like a 3-d jigsaw puzzle. When Apple upgraded the camera on the 6S to include optical stabilization, that meant a bigger camera, which meant the jigsaw had to be redone. Apple got to the point where they could not make the bigger and better camera fit without removing something else. The engineers responsible for putting the jigsaw together said “do we really need this headphone jack, if we take it out this jigsaw puzzle gets a whole lot simpler to solve” and the answer from higher up was “OK, guess the jack has to go.”
source:
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And many manufacturers / retailers understand market segmentation and use it to maximise coverage and reach of their product range. I use a camera when I want to take pictures that need anything more than a mini lens on a camera. If it needs stabilising, I use a camera. For me, phone cameras are a handy snapshot thing only. I’d rather have a headphone jack than a camera whose features I’ll hardly benefit from. Mostly, I cannot use a camera without a viewfinder anyway (well I can, but having to put on glasses to look at a screen to take a picture gets old - like me - fast - there’s another rant in here somewhere about camera makers who all now decide P&S cameras must be used like phones and do not need viewfinders - luckily I have a few Canon P&S models made before this trend, that still do just fine).
Someone will come and say “why should Apple appeal to niches?” or “there are too many combinations to appeal to every segment and make profit” - but a simple option - Audio Priority or Camera Priority woulld appeal to a lot of people. And those who say “why must I choose?” Well, buy a bloody dongle for your headphones.
But Apple are all “Nanny know best - this is what the device may be used for this is how it must be used and if you don’t like it, tough”. How many more would they sell if they actually did just a touch more market segmentation? Or, ignore the segmentation, just don’t threaten my older iPhone with obsolesence - which they WILL do eventually, with their OS, and also partly by driving upgrades that app developers have to develop for, such that eventually “this app only works with the latest gizmo and we don’t offer older versions of it for older phones”. A nanny / sheepdog combination focused on what’s best for Apple not what’s best for the broadest number of possible consumers. I know it’s their business model and I know it works for them (clearly) and for many users. But not all. Apple as a long history of abandoning segments. One day its growth will falter enough for one or two of those chickens to say "nah - not coming back to roost there!’
My take on this is that they took the lazy way out and/or had an ulterior agenda too. The higher-ups did not just say 'ok the jack must go" - they could have said - “try again and try harder” but the ulterior beneftis to Apple were weighed and found good. I do not believe it could not be made to fit in a phone that most would have been happy to see were it not for the fact Apple made this rod for their own back by insisting on marketing thinness. And yet the phones keep getting bigger…
Because they work, do not need charging and are not sure to run out of juice just when you most need them not to. And they are wholly reliable in delivering a signal compared to a wireless set-up. A cord may fail once in a blue moon but I prefer not to introduce another point of unpredictably regular failure.
We could go on like this all day - justification after justification, but the headline says it all “Phones without headphone jacks suck”. That is all. And I’ve now far exceeded my ranting quota and my ‘Apple are bastards’ blood pressure increase quota for the day. Going to lie down in a dark room until my iPhone is ready to collect from the repairer after having its battery replaced!!
Good day to all. 
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