The headphone jack lives!

Published February 20, 2019

Reports of the headphone jack’s death are greatly exaggerated. Or more accurately, premature. All of the latest versions of Samsung’s Galaxy phones are equipped with a 3.5mm port, bucking the trend set by Apple and followed by Google. While the headphone jack might eventually die, right now, in 2019, it’s alive and could be a major selling point for the four versions of the Samsung Galaxy S10.

Apple ditched the 3.5mm jack back in 2016 with the introduction of the iPhone 7, and some of us still haven’t gotten over it. The port has been around for generations. The 3.5mm audio jack is universal and handy, allowing someone to grab a set of headphones, any headphones costing between $10 and $1,000, and connect it to their phone. But alas, Apple removed the port from the iPhone and several manufacturers, including Google, followed. But not Samsung.

While the rest of the industry turned its back on the 3.5mm jack, Samsung kept including it on its latest smartphones and started using it as an advertised feature. What was once standard to every phone became a selling point for Samsung. This isn’t the first time Samsung bucked trends and kept around legacy features to entice buyers.

Smartphones used to have expandable memory, but as flash storage size increased, manufacturers stopped including MicroSD card slots on its phones. Not Samsung. Expandable memory remains an option in the S10 announced today.

There’s a reason Samsung is the top smartphone maker in the world: It listens to its customers, and clearly its customers want the versatility of a 3.5mm headphone jack. I do.

Alas, the 3.5mm jack will not live forever. Eventually the industry will move past the analog connection once there’s a better solution. But that’s not right now. Today, in 2019, the headphone jack has a friend in Samsung.