Just stop making things pointlessly slim and you dont need to create complex micro-hinged designs with flexible polycarbonite coated aluminum compound blah blah blah

Why not just move to the 2.5mm audio jack? Adapters for 2.5mm to 3.5mm are cheap…

Personally I think that it's the water proofing trend that is forcing the headphone jack to get rejected… could be wrong though

My water proof Xperia has a 3.5mm jack on it. I don't see the problem.

I think 3.5mm is thin enough as it is, I'd rather they shrunk the insanely large screen sizes instead of slowly creeping up to what will eventually just be a portable TV.

jab701
Why not just move to the 2.5mm audio jack? Adapters for 2.5mm to 3.5mm are cheap…

One of old HTC phones (back in the mid 2000s) had a 2.5mm port. Bit of a pain to have an adaptor sticking out as the bundled headphones were awful, but at least you could listen to music and charge it at the same time! And if they become standard then headphones can come with a 2.5mm port by default and an adaptor to make them larger…

SciFi
Personally I think that it's the water proofing trend that is forcing the headphone jack to get rejected… could be wrong though

I thought waterproofed headphone jacks have existed a while, didn't the Sony Z4 tablet have a waterproof headphone jack? (I owned one a while back but cant remember).

Biscuit
Just stop making things pointlessly slim and you dont need to create complex micro-hinged designs with flexible polycarbonite coated aluminum compound blah blah blah

I was having a rant about this just today. They make them thin and glassy so the journos rave about how amazing they feel but every bugger else has to put them in a case or they'll end up with a smashed screen or whatever. The end result is the case makes it thicker and makes the looks and feel in the hand pointless because you have it in the case all the time. Might as well make it 1mm thicker, have the battery bigger, the ports we want and not make it out of the most delicate material you can find. The other option is to do like Samsung do with the S8 and the Active (I think it's called that) phone. One is the pretty boy version for people who wear Armani and Hugo Boss and the other is the practical, robust longer lasting version for those of us who get our jeans from Asda.

I'd also be less annoyed about the headphone jack if they gave is two USB ports - they solve the problem with it needing to be thin and also solve my problem of needing to charge whilst listening which is a regular occurrence (because the battery life is shat).

SciFi
Personally I think that it's the water proofing trend that is forcing the headphone jack to get rejected… could be wrong though

Nah, Samsung worked around this on the S8. It's not an issue. Possibly makes it harder but not impossible.

jimbouk
One of old HTC phones (back in the mid 2000s) had a 2.5mm port. …

I think it might have been more than one. I certainly had an HTC-made smartphone on orange (yes, a proper smartphone, in 2006 ;)) that had a 2.5mm 4 pole socket for the headset. Nothing wrong with it at all, IMNSHO, although that device wasn't really thin enough to need it.

A flexible expanding port that could take both 2.5mm and 3.5mm plugs would be pretty cool, although I suspect the different pin-pitch might make that tricky.

Then again, this whole “need to make the device thinner” shtick is clearly nonsense, because a USB-C port is maybe 0.5mm narrower than a 3.5mm socket. If you can get a USB-C on your chassis you can get a 3.5mm headphone port. Be honest and admit that you actually want to reclaim that space to squeeze a slightly larger battery in….

This has already been done… By the vagina.

SciFi
Personally I think that it's the water proofing trend that is forcing the headphone jack to get rejected… could be wrong though

I have a waterproof iPod nano that I use for swimming. It gets immersed in 2 meters of water at the local swimming pool several times a week, and is working just fine. It does not need any fragile port covers or the like either.

Clearly it is perfectly possible to make a waterproof 3.5 mm headphone socket. The phone manufacturers who say they can't are just making excuses.

Product link: http://www.underwateraudio.com/waterproof-ipod/

You know, thinking about this you don't even need the expanding section of this design. There's no good reason you need to fully enclose the 3.5mm plug; as long as the curved depressions on either side are sufficient to prevent the plug from wobbling excessively, you could simply leave the sides exposed. Sure, Microsoft's “expanding” version looks a bit prettier, but functionally it's completely unnecessary.

Although to go back to my “not about thinness” point, it's worth remembering that the narrowest iPhone so far was still over 7mm deep, so plenty of space to fit a 3.5mm socket…

scaryjim
You know, thinking about this you don't even need the expanding section of this design. There's no good reason you need to fully enclose the 3.5mm plug; as long as the curved depressions on either side are sufficient to prevent the plug from wobbling excessively, you could simply leave the sides exposed. Sure, Microsoft's “expanding” version looks a bit prettier, but functionally it's completely unnecessary.

Although to go back to my “not about thinness” point, it's worth remembering that the narrowest iPhone so far was still over 7mm deep, so plenty of space to fit a 3.5mm socket…

As long as the user doesn't short the connections with their fingers as they hold the device

scaryjim
You know, thinking about this you don't even need the expanding section of this design. There's no good reason you need to fully enclose the 3.5mm plug; as long as the curved depressions on either side are sufficient to prevent the plug from wobbling excessively, you could simply leave the sides exposed. Sure, Microsoft's “expanding” version looks a bit prettier, but functionally it's completely unnecessary.

Although to go back to my “not about thinness” point, it's worth remembering that the narrowest iPhone so far was still over 7mm deep, so plenty of space to fit a 3.5mm socket…

I'm still amazed we can fit all that power into a 7mm “deep” device.

Xlucine
As long as the user doesn't short the connections with their fingers as they hold the device

Oh, I'm sure Apple are competent enough to NEVER have that kind of problem with one of their devices…. :o

scaryjim
Oh, I'm sure Apple are competent enough to NEVER have that kind of problem with one of their devices…. :o

Lololol. and for the younger ones who don't remember the iPhone 4… just Google iPhone radio case shorting.

ik9000
Lololol. and for the younger ones who don't remember the iPhone 4… just Google iPhone radio case shorting.

Just dont hold it like that… gawd

Biscuit
Just dont hold it like that… gawd

Didn't they also suggest using a non-conducting case?

Wasn't it great :) I actually went to try it out (and give my step-son a lesson in bad product design). Even when I'd seen it I couldn't believe it…. :confused: :O_o1:

apple does the same thing. i dont see anything mention about them.

scaryjim
Didn't they also suggest using a non-conducting case?

Wasn't it great :) I actually went to try it out (and give my step-son a lesson in bad product design). Even when I'd seen it I couldn't believe it…. :confused: :O_o1:

They gave away bumper cases for free “because they were so committed to customer satisfaction”. The Steve Jobs era, they could have had the device electrocute your son and still had hoardes of people lining up to buy it. Im wondering if this fascination is dicoming to an end now.

Talk to any of the honest iPhone owners and they will tell you how bad that phone was for reception and dropped calls.

Laptops have had this type of feature for the Ethernet port for awhile and have yet to come across one breaking off.