This confuses me too. The camera wart is ridiculous, and I bet if they made the device just that slight bit thicker they'd have room to retain the 3.5mm jack.
The other possibility is that the headphone jack makes water resistance that much more difficult. Maybe they think it's worth it?
Personally, I'm going to hold on to the 6s for as long as it's usable and then consider my options.
The funny thing is, they made a huge deal about catering to runners in the watch presentation. In the offseason I run about 20 to 30 miles per week, and I can tell you bluetooth headphones suck for running. They fall out easily as soon as I start sweating. Also, during training season the headphones will run out of juice if I don't remember to plug them in. They also drain the phone's battery - on a 30 minute run that's no problem, but on a 2-hour run that sucks. The best earphones are over the head, light-weight ones I can tuck under my cap whcih keeps them in place.
Oh well, maybe on the 8 they have a change of heart. And if they don't... there's always OpenMoko
Edit: In previous version I accidentally said Samsung Headphones.
Personally, I could never run with corded headphones again. I've used Motorola S8/S9 forever. Get last gen for $30-40, and they've held up to years of sweat.
In finding a link for you though, I see the price has become outrageous as they've apparently been discontinued :(.
I find it's the wire that goes first, probably from all the twisting and tangling that happens day to day. At 5x the cost I could see wireless ones being cheaper, long term.
I still wouldn't want to muck about with batteries, etc though.
I vastly prefer bluetooth for working out, but I am incredibly sceptic about the sound quality from that lightning adapter.
I mean, Apple's justification is that they are being courageous in pushing the world towards their vision of the future, which is wireless. Ignoring, for the moment whether this is a valid vision, how does a courageous move towards this future involve bundling not one, but 2 wired options with the phone?
I'm fairly certain I would have been unhappy with the decision to drop the headphone jack no matter what, but couching it as courage has taken me from unhappiness to screw them.
All I wanted was them to tell me what great benefit that space in the case being free brought me, be it more battery, waterproofing, more processing power. But what did I get? I got told they were doing it because they hate wires and it's a courageous thing to do, like I'm supposed to applaud them for that. No solid justification for it at all.
For years I have used my headphones in my iPhone on the way to work then as soon as I get to work I plug them into my laptop.
Now I have a choice of: - switching over the BT (gonna be fun pairing and unpairing when I arrive and leave work) - using my same headphones and carrying a dongle having the dongle rattling around my desk during the day, then taking the dongle with me for the trip home - buying two pairs of headphones with one that ONLY works with the iPhone
None of these are good solutions.
https://www.amazon.com/Nike-HJ020-headphones-Discontinued-Ma...
For bicycling, I am mainly on bike paths but when I have to enter traffic for a bit, I would never, ever ride with any kind of ear bud or closed headphones. The Flite design has gentle pressure pushing the phones against my ears, for a very open design that keeps me aware of what is happening around me. They are very stable, resting on the back of my neck, even while running. I don't remember them every falling off from exercise.
The original Flite headphones were somewhat overpriced, and lasted about a year before they failed. The Chinese clones moved in and the price collapsed. I bought a batch of ten knockoffs for $17 a few years ago, and they still last a year or so.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=sport+headphones+behind+...
http://www.consumerreports.org/smartphones/samsung-galaxy-s7...
http://www.jlabaudio.com/products/epic2-bluetooth-wireless-s...
Not sure if you've seen or tried these.
My connectivity has been fine while running, and always surprises me in the gym. I leave my phone in my gym bag now and range is no problem if I'm super setting exercises and moving to different equipment. These are my first and only pair of BT headphones, and they spoiled me to the point where I'll never go back to wired for exercising.
Besides, no BT headset would relieve the battery problems.
For me something like this works really well: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QHOCTG6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_goh0...
Just put my hat over them and they are firmly held in place.
http://www.plantronics.com/us/product/backbeat-fit (cheaper on Amazon).
Just another option to add to the list.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Motorola-SF600-Wireless-Sports-Headph...
I'll never use the lighting dongle and I don't use corded buds/headphones now so I will literally not feel a difference in that respect. I only listen to audiobooks, podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify on the phone, so I'm not exactly getting the greatest audio I could be anyway.
However, having increased dust and water protection are something I'm very happy to get if it improves the longevity of the device. I don't really care too much about it getting that much thinner either, but I'm happy with making the phone more physically robust if they can.
Moreover, if you want to play a song from your phone through your stereo and want the best sound possible, you'd use a digital connection versus an analog one.
And what about the battery life? Don't you care about that either? Or do you even recognize it's a critical issue for many people? It just sounds like you're desperately defending an Apple product at all costs.
Really? How long do you keep your phones for? 2 years, tops? I've never damaged a phone I've owned, let alone rendered one unusable because of either dust or water.
This will have no appreciable effect on the life of the product for me.
I can't imagine iPhone line continue this way for next 5-10 years. They need to get into something new fast. VR, AR etc.
My boss said something today concerning Apple that is relevant to this. After hearing Warren Buffet bought a bunch of APPL.
"Apple isn't a technology company anymore, they're consumer goods, so that's an understandable choice."
People say they want lots of battery life, but slimmer devices consistently outsell thicker ones.
What a coincidence.
The camera bump on the 6S is ~1mm high. 30% more battery capacity in that amount of space seems optimistic.
I guess if they make battery last 30% longer, then you won't be forced to change a phone in 2-3 years when battery starts deteriorating and it is bad for business.
Edit: More like in the 80s.
With that said, I don't actually disagree with taking the headphone jack out. I do think there needs to be a more universal replacement than what they are suggesting though.
It's mostly the fact that it was replaced with the lightning port that gets to me more than anything else. If it was something like USB-C, I'd feel more comfortable since that should be more widely available in time.
The software platform Apple has built is unrivaled.
Too afraid to test it myself though.
This race to thin phones with unusable battery life reminds me to the race to more and more mega pixels in digital cameras with unusable low exposition quality some years ago. It's just about the buzz, it just hinders the technology in order to be able to tell a more catchy number to consumers.
I would happily go with a 33% thicker iPhone with great battery life and a headphone jack and I doubt that most of the people would notice the difference in size.
Oddly enough, the main complaint I had about it was that because it was so flush and shiny, it slid around too much on a table. Had to put a protective film on which was a bit more grippy.
I'm guessing that the average consumer has no idea what an f-stop is, or that having a maximum lens aperture of f/1.8 is any better than f/5.6 or f/16. And the people who do know probably also know that for a lens and sensor that are maybe a quarter of an inch wide, a bump in the maximum aperture is not going to make the camera perform anywhere near a dedicated camera, so the focus on that detail is a bit odd to me.
This looks like another method to lock in the consumer to their eco system and or squeeze that extra buck out of them. Not so much about shrinking in size or technology.
IMO this is nothing more than selling and controlling peripherals that can play with iphone and drm.
Edit: Why the heck am I being downvoted for this? I'm not even expressing an opinion as to whether I think the jack should have been removed or not.
Apple gets royalties from the production of Lightning connectors, which they certainly don't from standard 1/8th-inch TRS jacks. So therefore, they have a very obvious and vested interest in killing off standardized connectors and pushing everything to proprietary connectors, for which they receive royalties, whenever possible.
> This is the cry of people who desperately want to love a company unconditionally
Insulting people is not how you win arguments.
Edit: Seriously guys, what's with the downvotes? I feel like I'm being brigaded at this point.
Must be magic, if Apple hasn't trademarked that already.
All in all. I'll wait a year for 7s to replace my 6s if nothing else worthy and working out of the box comes out.
>This confuses me too. The camera wart is ridiculous, and I bet if they made the device just that slight bit thicker they'd have room to retain the 3.5mm jack.
I hate that they removed the 3.5 but if you assume that people are using a case then camera wart does not really make the phone any thicker.
So tired of this argument in defence of the wart, people use a case because of the wart and then this is used to justify the wart "everyone uses a case"
Wouldn't surprise me if iPhone 9 was wireless only. Somehow.
what annoys me more is that most advancements are only for the 'plus' size model. that's the easy way out of the tech race, and I was just hoping that they brought feature parity with an updated SE model
so far I see no good replacement for my 5s except the previous year SE, but I'm not the one to spend that money on two year old hardware.
The animation when loading the page made that bulge almost phallic. That phone appears like an erection, growing up and up...
It's almost certainly only in my mind though.
I recall Apple having a patent on a manufacturing process to bond a small aluminum region around the headphone jack to a case made of something harder, so maybe the headphone jack was causing problems in advancing case materials?
If an opening for a 3.5mm jack was an issue for some future design, so would all of the other holes (esp. the lightning port).
