The Pixel 2's missing headphone jack proves Apple was right

Google Pixel 2: No 3.5mm headphone jack

When Apple launched the iPhone 7 a year ago, Apple confidently declared the headphone jack as an obsolete technology that we couldn't learn to live without. Many people disagreed with the necessity of its removal then, but now, with Google joining the ranks of jack-less phone makers, it’s time to accept the inevitability of the 3.5mm port’s demise. According to the two towering US mobile tech giants, the Google and the Apple, the future is wireless (or, in emergencies, dongle-shaped) and even though that will make us feel inconvenient at the first place and our tech less compatible, we should all just come along for the ride. I’m not okay with this, but it isn’t my choice to make.

Pixel 2 debut

Perhaps this is the resignation stage of grief that we all have to go through. I just can’t summon the passion to be enraged by Google omitting what I consider to be one of my favorite things in the world. Plugging in a new pair of headphones is obviously a part of the ceremony of discovering great new sound. It’s a tactile and auditory preamble to the enjoyment of music. But the truth of headphone jacks on phones is that not all of them were made equal. A lot of them have actually served as portals to hellishly bland, flat music reproduction that let the user down. The original Pixel was among the number of phones with really underwhelming and poor headphone audio.

A year after Google mocks Apple for removing the headphone jack, they have to sell this for their new phones. Joke. #Pixel2 pic.twitter.com/IKP5sjbU9M

— Kevin Mihalich (@_Mickalick) October 4, 2017

Apple's choice in removing the headphone jack was that we could stomach some short-term inconvenience for the longer-term benefits of freeing up valuable real estate inside the phone. It was a calculated risk, intended in part to also force the development of better wireless and digital gear by headphone makers. Audeze, Bowers & Wilkins, and Shure have all responded by developing their own Lightning cables, which ensure their headphones sound their best when playing stuff from an iPhone. Everyone else in the consumer audio space now considers wireless as the default area of focus, and Apple’s influence in this respect should not be underestimated.

Looking at how other mobile makers like HTC, Motorola, Xiaomi, and Google — and soon probably Huawei too, has planned for a 2017 flagship phone without a 3.5mm jack, and it's probably the upcoming Mate 10 Pro, things are panning out exactly as Apple anticipated. A whole bunch of people are carrying those annoying, easy-to-misplace dongles for their “legacy” wired headphones, nobody is especially overjoyed about the change, but we’re all adapting.

The end of the headphone jack has not been the end of the world for iPhone users.

Google's mockery on Apple's headphone jack removal during original Pixel arrival

Google initially mocked Apple’s decision, poking fun at it with marketing materials that described the 2016 Pixel’s headphone jack as “satisfyingly not new.” But companies take cheap shots at one another all the time, and that was then, this is now, and now Google thinks it has higher priorities than audio.


Google’s defence that it wanted to provide a better audio and digital experience or an all-screen phone is something not very different from what Apple had said last year. Apple’s senior executive Greg Joswiak said that the 3.5mm audio connector was archaic and even compared it with a “dinosaur.”

“The audio connector is more than 100 years old,” Joswiak told 9to5mac. “It had its last big innovation about 50 years ago. You know what that was? They made it smaller. It hasn’t been touched since then. It’s a dinosaur. It’s time to move on.”

Another Apple executive Dan Riccio said that removing the audio connector helped the company add IP7 water resistance, which had been missing on the iPhones for years. “It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone,” Riccio said.

It may be recalled that Motorola had become one of the first players to kill 3.5mm audio jack with its Moto Z, a few months before Apple introduced the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.


Google's own justification for why it’s removing the analog port as given to TechCrunch after the Pixel 2 launch event:

“The primary reason [for dropping the jack] is establishing a mechanical design path for the future,” Google product chief Mario Queiroz told TechCrunch after the event. “We want the display to go closer and closer to the edge. Our team said, ‘if we’re going to make the shift, let’s make it sooner, rather than later.’ Last year may have been too early. Now there are more phones on the market.”

Mario Queiroz, Vice President of Product Management at Google, speaks about the Pixel 2 phone during a launch event in San Francisco, California, U.S. October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam(REUT )

At first blush this seems like a flimsy excuse when you look at the Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG V30, both gorgeous, almost bezel-less phones with headphone jacks present. But extend the timeline beyond this year or the next, think about it in the context of a world where even more internal phone components are integrated or obviated. As phones have been shrinking, the proportion of internal space that the headphone jack commands inside them (and not just the jack itself, there’s also the audio amplifier and digital-to-analog converter circuitry to consider) has been growing. If we’re just talking about the near term, Apple and Google’s arguments seem unconvincing that the jack had to go to make room for better, more integrated design. However, over the long run, these companies are probably right.