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I finally gave up on the 3.5 mm headphone jack in smartphones

By Mariyan Slavov

Published: Nov 18, 2025, 9:32 AM

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This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.

I finally gave up on the 3.5 mm headphone jack in smartphones

Music holds a special place in my heart. I still remember the first audio cassette I bought when I was nine years old — it was Elvis Presley's greatest hits. I spent so much money on batteries for my Walkman, I could've bought a Hi-Fi system back in the day.

I've also lived through a couple of audio revolutions, including the demise of the aforementioned cassette, the birth and untimely end of the audio CD, the MP3 revolution, and finally — the smartphone.

As you can imagine, I constantly had headphones on, and the microSD cards were constantly on the brink of bursting their metaphorical seams. I loved the freedom smartphones gave us, and I swore on the 3.5 mm headphone jack. Yeah, I was one of those guys. Not anymore.

What happened to the 3.5 mm jack?

It was there until one day it wasn't anymore - the iPhone 6s was the last one featuring the jack | Image by PhoneArena

After this overly emotional intro, time for a quick recap. Believe it or not, Apple wasn't the first brand to remove the headphone jack from its smartphones. It happened years before that when Oppo launched the little known Finder model back in 2012.

The 3.5 mm jack vanished from the iPhone 7 four years later in 2016, and two years after that Samsung started removing it from its phones with the Galaxy Note 10 in 2019.

I won't get deep into the reasons behind this shift; some say it was companies trying to push their Bluetooth headphones, while the companies themselves cited design constraints and phones being too thin to accommodate the jack, along with waterproofing concerns. The end result was what mattered.

As you can imagine, I wasn't happy. Around this time I was playing in a cover band and enjoying my 5 minutes of fame, and I had studio-grade monitor headphones and a pair of really good Sennheisers as well.

I was using a Sony Z5 Compact at the time (being a Sony fan ever since that Walkman), and it was perfectly capable of driving those headphones. But this phone was getting old, and I was running out of options.

Why did I refuse to let go of the 3.5 mm jack?

This used to be me!

It wasn't just nostalgia and resistance to change, at least in the beginning. Ten or so years ago, Bluetooth headphones weren't all that good; the connection was unstable, the latency was also there, and the overall quality was noticeably worse than my wired headphones.

Most wireless earbuds and headphones weren't cheap as well, and having good pairs of wired headphones lying around meant switching to wireless would've been a massive waste of money.

I remember trying a pair of Samsung Gear IconX wireless earbuds around that time and getting quite disappointed in the sound quality and also the battery life. These buds barely lasted two hours.

With a wired pair of headphones, you just plug them in, and the real limitation is your smartphone's battery life. They're universal and simple, and there are no batteries inside to die and render them useless after a couple of years.

So I stuck to using Xperia phones and clinging to my wired headphones for quite a long time. What changed?

Wireless slowly got under my skin

I used to buy phones specifically for the 3.5 mm jack alone

People often talk about a WOW moment when they suddenly switch their views about something. It's a much more romantic way to tell a story. For me, though, the change was slow and almost deceitful.

In the past year I found myself reaching for the wireless pairs of earbuds that we constantly test and review more and more often.

The audio quality is much better now, and the battery life is so good, you can get through a day of listening on some models.

If there was a WOW moment after all, it'd have been the realization that Bluetooth gadgets are so common now that listening to music, making calls, and watching movies now happen on many different devices you use around the house.

I used to think that your smartphone is with you all the time, so wired or wireless doesn't matter, but now I think differently. Now I can walk around the house freely and connect to multiple Bluetooth sources seamlessly.

Wireless audio is far from perfect, but wireless won

Wireless Bluetooth earbuds have come a long way | Image by PhoneArena

I gave up on my obsession with wired audio and the 3.5 mm jack in particular when it comes to smartphones. But this doesn't mean wireless audio is perfect — there's still latency, not all wireless earbuds have great battery life, and after a few years you need a new pair because the battery degrades and nobody bothers to replace it.

We were also kind of forced to make the switch, as phones slowly but surely got rid of the 3.5 mm headphone jack (some still have it, but it's long gone in the most popular models). And when you're forced to do something, there's natural resistance.

Wireless won not because it's better than wired audio, in my opinion, but because it got good enough for the majority of people. Including me.

Any chance of getting the 3.5 mm jack back on iPhones and Galaxies?

The dream of the portless phone is still alive | Image by PhoneArena

I don't think that's gonna happen. Wireless audio standards and codecs are getting better and better, silicon-carbon batteries are slowly finding their way into smartwatches and expected to arrive into headphones soon, and the tradeoffs are getting smaller and smaller.

The dream of a portless smartphone is still alive as well, and the 3.5 mm jack has no place in that particular dream. I still think that my wired Sennheisers sound better than any Bluetooth set, but I don't demand a 3.5 mm jack from my smartphone, and I don't frown when I don't find one.

What do you think? Do you still need this audio port on your smartphone? A poll from 2021 showed that a huge percentage of people (76%) wanted the 3.5 mm jack back. One year later this percentage has fallen to 62%. Let's see how things are in 2025.

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Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.

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