I like 1/8" jacks too, but active noise cancellation – which is pretty impressive, honestly – legitimately needed a source of power, and there was no standard way of providing that over that interface.
You can get both USB-C or Bluetooth adapters for a 1/8" headphone set to run an existing pair. I’ll concede that it’s a bit more bulk to carry, but one can continue to use 1/8" headphones with phones.
Yeah, I have a pair (which charges over USB-C and also has a 1/8" audio jack). But if you’re having to charge batteries, you’re at the point that you are having to plug it into USB-C anyway, so you might as well just be using USB-C (well, or wireless), since you’re having to deal with the batteries of wireless and plugging into USB anyway. There just isn’t a lot of point to using the 1/8" jack on them other than to let you conveniently also use them with audio sources that have 1/8" jacks but no USB-C/wireless support. It doesn’t really buy you much to use the 1/8" jack on a smartphone that doesn’t have that limitation.
There are some people who have expensive headphones that don’t do ANC and will want to keep using them, but those you can use the adapters on.
Good luck bringing it back when the whole industry moves away from wired headphones and 3.5mm jacks.
And nobody asked them to.
I like 1/8" jacks too, but active noise cancellation – which is pretty impressive, honestly – legitimately needed a source of power, and there was no standard way of providing that over that interface.
You can get both USB-C or Bluetooth adapters for a 1/8" headphone set to run an existing pair. I’ll concede that it’s a bit more bulk to carry, but one can continue to use 1/8" headphones with phones.
Wired active noise cancelation headphones exist, you know. They have batteries, which are a perfectly legitimate source of power.
Yeah, I have a pair (which charges over USB-C and also has a 1/8" audio jack). But if you’re having to charge batteries, you’re at the point that you are having to plug it into USB-C anyway, so you might as well just be using USB-C (well, or wireless), since you’re having to deal with the batteries of wireless and plugging into USB anyway. There just isn’t a lot of point to using the 1/8" jack on them other than to let you conveniently also use them with audio sources that have 1/8" jacks but no USB-C/wireless support. It doesn’t really buy you much to use the 1/8" jack on a smartphone that doesn’t have that limitation.
There are some people who have expensive headphones that don’t do ANC and will want to keep using them, but those you can use the adapters on.