The death of the 3.5mm headphone jack on smartphones — all smartphones, that is, not just expensive flagships where it’s already a rarity — is something many of us have been afraid of. But it has been on the horizon since at least 2016, when Apple had the self-proclaimed “courage” to remove the jack from the iPhone 7. Despite attacking that position in marketing, Samsung would eventually join suit with the Galaxy Note 10 in 2019, meaning that the two biggest players in the smartphone world were on board.
In fact, the writing was probably on the wall much earlier. The first major phone to ditch 3.5mm was the Oppo Finder in 2012 — the move was simply premature, since alternative headphones were less practical at the time and Oppo lacked market influence. Apple and Samsung not only had their own wireless earbuds ready to go, but the clout to make the transition stick. Since then, Apple’s AirPods have become wildly successful, Samsung’s Galaxy Buds have plenty of fans too, and it’s increasingly common for phones to ship without any bundled headphones.