These days smartphone companies prefer to eliminate the 3.5mm Headphone Jack. It’s a trend that started with Apple’s introduction of iPhone 7, 7 Plus in 2016. This year, Andy Rubin decided to follow Apple's trend. Rubin’s Essential phone (PH-1) was only recently made available for sale to the market. Essential Phone (PH-1) is said to be inspired from both these phones for having no headphone jack. The smartphone originally came without the support for the 3.5mm headphone jack. According to a report by Tech Radar, the company is now working towards the developing of an accessory that will serve this purpose.
This addition can simply be connected to the handset, and be used as the 3.5mm headphone jack.
What company has to say?
Essential Phone founder, Andy Rubin during the Reddit AMA yesterday confirmed this news. He was attending the event along with a couple of other members from his company. They said that they are working on a “high-end audio accessory” that will support the headphone jack. The feature is still in the making and it will take some time until its finally been introduced in the market. It’s not like signal accessories aren’t already available in the market. Consumers have several high-end options to choose from. But the proprietary product has two advantages over the rest. First off, it’s originally made by the company for a particular smartphone.
Therefore, it’s functionality is perfectly planned. Secondly, because it is less costly in comparison to its substitutes.
Specs and features
The Essential Phone packs a USB Type-C port already. It functions the same way as the Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The company team members at Reddit AMA also explained why they decided to leave the connectivity option in its smartphone.
According to them, headphone jacks are “pretty big components.” But the issue with them is that they don’t fit well with “all-screen Phone architectures.” After applying plenty of effort and resources into studying the feature, they decided against integrating it. Essential’s Vice President (Design), Dave Evans said that “fitting a headphone jack into our Phone required tradeoffs we were uncomfortable with.” If they had decided to integrate the 3.5mm headphone jack in Essential, then they would have to grow the “chin” in the front panel. This would apparently reduce the handset’s battery capacity by ten percent, stay tuned for more tech updates.
