I Didn’t Want the Headphone Jack Taken Away—Now I Don’t Miss It at All

When headphone jacks started to disappear from phones a decade ago, I wasn’t happy about it. But time went on, and now I hardly register that my phone lacks this once essential port. I’m now completely ambivalent whenever I do get my hands on a phone that still has it. What happened?

Bluetooth Provides a Better Experience

Quite frankly, I don’t miss carrying wired earbuds around. They were usually a tangled mess in my pocket, and listening to anything first meant taking time to untangle the cords. It frankly didn’t seem to matter if I had just used them merely an hour ago. They had already devolved back into a knot.

I’m a parent now, so it’s not just my wires that are an issue. It’s far more frustrating getting out knots for a kid who creates substantially tighter ones—and far more of them.

Bluetooth does away with that frustration. Now I can simply pull buds out of my pocket and put them in my ear with minimal friction.

Not once I have looked at the wireless buds in my hands and thought to myself, “Gee, I wish these had a cord.” Not even, rare as it is, when they’re dead.

Battery Life Has Made Charging a Non-Issue

That’s the thing about wireless earbuds—they do eventually die. There’s one, or rather three, additional things that you need to keep charged whenever you’re carrying about two battery-powered buds and the charging case that goes with them.

But these tiny buds are incredibly energy efficient devices. They use the tiniest batteries, so they charge relatively quickly off even the slowest of chargers. Their battery life is also measured in days, if not weeks, depending on how many hours of listening you do in a day. Many buds now manage over 50 hours of battery life. Less impressive options still usually offer over 20. That’s still long enough to have your ears plugged during every waking hour and also use the buds to lull yourself to sleep. More realistically, it’s several days of use.

With such long battery life, and such abundant and quick charging, I spend very little time thinking about powering my buds. Frankly, I spend less time charging than I did untangling cords.

Wireless Earbuds Have Dropped in Price

Wireless earbuds were once a luxury, but that is no longer the case. Don’t get me wrong—you can absolutely drop $200 on a pair of noise-canceling earbuds. You can even spend $300. But you don’t need to spend that much to get good-sounding audio. I personally don’t hear much difference between $150 earbuds and $50 ones when listening to music (their microphones, though, are a different story).

Truth be told, I never spent anywhere near $50 on wired buds. When a good-enough option could be had for $15, even $30 feels like a splurge. But it only took one pair of Bluetooth earbuds to convince me I wasn’t going back. And if I need wireless buds on a budget, that doesn’t mean I need to hit up a dollar store and settle for poor-sounding audio that won’t last the year. Quality brands like JLab offer decent enough options in the $30 range, like the Go Pop ANC.

That’s One Less Component That Might Break

Phones may not have the best reputation for being durable, but I’ve personally had better luck with them than laptops. I haven’t had hinges wear out with age. I’m not as terrified of accidentally spilling water nearby. There are no keyboard keys that somehow manage to pop out. I’ve had my second-hand Galaxy Z Fold 6 for nearly a year, and it still looks nearly new.

Compared to laptops, there are fewer components in a phone that are easy to break. I’ve somewhat come to appreciate that my phone only has a USB-C port (though, like my colleague Ismar, I wouldn’t mind if there were a second one, especially on a book-style foldable). That means fewer ports that can break.

A headphone jack is not a moving part, but that hasn’t mattered all that much. I’ve had headphone jacks wear out on me. I would plug in wired buds and find I couldn’t hear audio unless they were turned just the right way. Eventually, they wouldn’t play audio unless I applied just enough continuous pressure to keep them at the right angle. Then the port stopped working entirely.

I wouldn’t be surprised if companies did away with headphone jacks not just because they saw an opportunity to sell wireless buds for more money more often, but because they were also tired of performing exchanges or repairs.

The headphone jack disappearing felt like losing functionality that I relied on everyday. And yes, that remains factually true. But facts aren’t the whole story. I listen to music and podcasts more now than I ever did back then, so much so that this mental screensaver feels like a problem. The loss of the headphone jack hasn’t hindered me in the slightest. Do I want other people to have the option to buy phones with headphone jacks? Absolutely. But I’m personally now as ambivalent as can be.