Around December 2015, rumours of Apple replacing the 3.5-mm audio jack with the charging port to connect earphones started doing the rounds. However, even before the much touted announcement of the iPhone7 - the first jack-free smartphone from the Apple stable - in September this year, some rival companies have ensured they stay ahead of the curve. For instance, Motorola's modular smartphone, Moto Z, which was launched a couple of months ago, has done away with the audio jack. Even Chinese smartphone maker LeEco's Le 2 and Le Max 2 models, announced recently, will not have the 3.5-mm jack.
This, experts say, is just the beginning. They believe that more and more smartphone makers will ditch the 3.5-mm jack - the small circular port that you have been using for all these years to connect your earphones for answering calls and listening to music - for the lighting port.
The industry, in fact, is set to witness a new beginning. Experts say we have come a long way since the micro USB became a standard across all smartphone brands (minus Apple) for charging. It will now be replaced with the USB Type C. While most say that the biggest benefit of Type C connectors is its ease of use - one can plug the cable from either side (reversible) - there are other advantages, too, that could change the way we use our phones. The Type C will send digital signals, whereas the 3.5-mm audio port could send only analogue signals. It will not only help in improving the sound quality, but will also be compatible with your old headphones, through an adapter. The Type C is backward compatible and uses the connectors analogue signals to deliver stereo sound over headphones.
"We understood that no matter how good the performance of the drive circuit is, as long as the 3.5-mm jack is used, there will always be audio loss. We recognised the defects in the analogue architecture and moved the decoding chip from the phone to the earphone. The CPU-processed digital audio stream is transmitted directly to the earphone through the Type C jack. The versatility of this port successfully avoids various flaws of the traditional 3.5-mm connector. There-fore, a pure digital loss-less music transmission architecture has now become a reality," says Atul Jain, COO, Smart Electronics Business, LeEco India.
And then, there are other benefits, too. Doing away with the headphone jack can help in making a smartphone sleeker and even waterproof. This has been done in the past. In 2014, when Oppo had announced its R5 smartphone - the the world's thinnest smartphone at 4.85-mm thickness - the company had traded off the audio jack. However, back then the move was not well received. But it seems the trend is making a comeback, and it raises a few more questions.
Industry insiders say that Apple, in fact, ditched the headphone jack to make the iPhone water resistant. "Apple appears to be eliminating the headphone jack in order to waterproof the upcoming iPhone, though that is just speculation on my part. The other vendors who are doing the same seem to be just following Apple. I honestly think other vendors are anticipating Apple's move and are just making their phones slightly thinner (which is an alternative but different from waterproofing). You can either save internal volume, or fill that volume with another speaker to mitigate the decreased sound quality of a waterproofed speaker," says Daniel Matte, Analyst, Canalys.
While one could use a bluetooth headphone, the sound quality will certainly be compromised. Some companies are also adding a USB Type C to the 3.5-mm audio jack connector.
Over many years, the 3.5-mm audio jack has been acting as an antenna for receving radio signals on a smartphone. Some of the manufacturers tried to have a built-in antenna in their handsets but it did not become popular.