• smeg@feddit.uk
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    8 months ago

    I don’t think it’s about the cost of the 3.5mm jack itself, it’s about the space it takes up. “Thinner and lighter” as a goal means removing chunky things they don’t think are necessary. Also waterproofing maybe?

    • orangeboats@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I am not so sure about the waterproofability of headphone jacks, but does it benefit to make phones even “thinner and lighter”?

      • T156@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Completely fine. There are multiple phones that have been out with waterproofing and headphone jacks.

        It’s not that much more difficult to waterproof than the charge port.

      • smeg@feddit.uk
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        8 months ago

        I’ve got no idea of the legitimacy of the claim, it’s just what the manufacturers claim. Likewise, they assume people want “thinner and lighter”, presumably because that’s what Steve Jobs said. It’s all just trying to make the devices appeal to the mass market.

        • Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          They don’t even assume that anymore. If you look at the mean dimensions of sold phones in NL over the last 7 years, you’ll see that the ‘thinnest’ year is already behind us. Less then 6/7mm just becomes unwieldy for a lot of hands, and the sold phones dimensions reflect that.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Obviously. If you can free up thickness and weight in one area, you can increase things like battery size, either alone or to compensate for a higher-power processor or something.

        • orangeboats@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I don’t think the battery argument is convincing enough to me unfortunately, since it’s more likely that the recent increase in battery capacity is due to battery chemistry improvements rather than increased physical size.

          I mean, I have two similar sized phones from different eras. One had 3000mAh, another had 5000mAh. They both include a headphone jack.