The iPhone 7 has been out for more than a year. That means it’s been a year since Apple revolutionized the smartphone industry by actually taking away a feature.

The device was the first iPhone to drop the 3.5 mm headphone jack, limiting users to wireless Bluetooth headphones or headphones plugged in through the same port used for charging. As usual, other companies followed Apple’s lead. Google’s Pixel 2 debuted without a headphone jack last week, and Samsung is expected to drop the jack from its Galaxy S9 coming early next year.

But Apple doesn’t care about what users really want in a phone or if new technology like wireless headphones actually demands ditching the old. And by blindly following Apple’s lead, every other tech company is overlooking user needs just to seem up to date.

Thankfully, there is one exception to this trend: LG’s new V30 smartphone, released in the United States earlier this month. Rather than kicking the feature in the name of “progress,” LG is using the jack and the phone’s higher sound quality to differentiate itself from competitors.

Vlad Savov, The Verge’s senior editor and headphone reviewer, uses a Pixel 2 as his personal mobile device and listens to music on the go on his jack-less phone using wireless headphones. He said the lack of a headphone jack didn’t really affect his decision to transition to that phone.

Savov, who’s written extensively on the topic of headphone jacks, said he respects LG’s efforts to emphasize audio but added that LG is an exception to the larger trend. Most tech consumers don’t really care much about the change, he said.

“The iPhone 7 has proven conclusively that headphone jacks are not determinants for consumer phone purchases,” Savov said in an email. “They aren’t becoming apathetic, they never cared that deeply to begin with.”

But even if Apple doesn’t care, other companies shouldn’t be lining up to copy what Apple had the “courage” to do. Wireless headphones make no sense for the average phone buyer — for more reasons than I can fit here.

Anna Henderson | Contributing Design Editor

Bluetooth headphones are often significantly more expensive than wired ones. AirPods cost $159 while EarPods come packaged with your phone at no extra price. The math isn’t hard.

Right now, the battery life on wireless headphones sucks. AirPods last just five hours on a single charge, and the Beats X — touted for having one of the best battery lives in mainstream wireless headphones — last just eight hours. Even if you’re not spending five to eight hours listening to music every day, headphones are just adding to the number of your gadgets that already need a daily charge.

And if you’re like me and dished out a decent amount of money on headphones that would ideally last a year, you probably won’t want to spend more on inferior wireless headphones. So, you’ll use a dongle to adapt your headphones to the iPhone 8. And when you inevitably lose that dongle, you’ll be without music until you go to the Apple Store to spend $9 on a new one. Rinse and repeat.

Lauren Dragan, a senior staff writer at The New York Times’s Wirecutter and self-professed “audio nerd at heart,” uses an iPhone 7 day-to-day. She said depending on a dongle for mobile listening is inconvenient.

“Having to remember to bring that that lightning adaptor with you is pretty annoying,” Dragan said in an email. “You can’t just buy a cheap pair of earbuds at the pharmacy if you forget to pack your pair when traveling.”

Like every major technology, headphones are undoubtedly headed toward becoming wireless, Dragan said. As long as they’re convenient and widespread, this isn’t a bad thing. Dragan said she can easily see a world five to 10 years into the future when headphones can be used all day for translation, directions, reminders and gaming, among other features.

“It really is possible now, it’s just that the battery capacity isn’t available yet,” Dragan said. “Once it is, that’s the future.”

The iPod made the idea of listening to your favorite music on the go a reality, and one of the iPhone’s original ambitions was to bring that experience to your phone. Taking away the headphone jack destroys that tenet of our mobile lives.

Consumers aren’t ready for wireless headphones yet, and wireless headphones aren’t ready for consumers. But Apple and its competitors-turned-followers don’t seem to realize forcing them on users won’t magically make the technology better. Taking away the headphone jack only shoves a half-baked technology into the hands of phone buyers who never asked for it.

Brett Weiser-Schlesinger is a senior newspaper and online journalism and information management and technology dual major. He can be reached by email at bweisers@syr.edu or on Twitter at @brettws.

Published on October 24, 2017 at 9:50 pm