> I think I'm in the minority, but I haven't really missed the headphone jack in my iPhone 11

You don't miss it until you do. When you are trying to join a meeting and your bluetooth headset absolutely refuses to work (and yes, even the fancy Airpods Pro do that occasionally), you wish you had the ability to just plug in an old-fashioned, analog headset. Which you can pull easily, with no fuss, from many devices, including computers and gaming consoles. Quick, no pairing required. No battery issues.

Analog headphones are also very cheap(good if you are not in a rich country), and will always be cheaper than bluetooth headphones, as there is minimal hardware required. You can quickly pick one up even from a shady street seller and you know it will work(longevity might suffer, but again, cheap).

The only problem with the headphone jack is that it is a very old standard. It's big connector, and takes significant real state inside a phone.

> a lot of people hated it, until it was a nonissue

While I got the Airpods Pro when they launched and loved them at first, the battery degradation and seemingly worse ANC performance has really irked me given their price. I've also tried using cheaper wireless earbuds, but their connectivity can be spotty. I know it's not the worst issue, but I do miss being able to take a pair of wired earbuds and use them freely between my laptop and phone and not have to worry about their battery lives.

Yeah, I hated the concept but then I picked up an iPhone 8 as the most reasonably-sized flagship I could find and willing to make sacrifices for the size.

It was basically a forced upgrade to bluetooth headphones. I bought some bluetooth over-ear ANC headphones like two weeks later and it really hasn't annoyed me at all since.

You're probably in the majority. One can work around the lack of a 3.5mm jack, it's just a minor pain.

The larger problem with modern phones is the form factor.

Might be that some people still remember the Bluetooth from 2010 or so.

These days, I charge my wireless headphones once a week. When I turn them on, they are connected before I have opened the music app. The connection is stable. When I stop playing sound on my phone and start sound on my laptop, they automatically switch to that. Their microphone is perfectly fine for calling people.

You aren’t in the minority. You are in the silent majority though. Most people -and really emphasizing most in terms of what people actually buy not what they complain about online- don’t care about a 3.5mm jack.

It’s gone, it’s never coming back. To that end, once iPhone goes USB-C it’ll accelerate this majority non-issue.

I don't think it's a good comparison for several reasons. 1) Those technologies were already not as heavily used when they were dropped. There are still tons of traditional headphones being manufactured and sold, even years after phones have started dropping them. 2) It's easy to leave an external drive at a desk for occasional use, it's much less convenient to carry a dongle everywhere since you likely want to use headphones on-the-go. 3) This is subjective, but floppy to cd-rom is clearly an upgrade, wireless to wired headphones is not. It adds syncing and battery life problems to an otherwise simple technology.

Bluetooth earphones mic quality is absolute ass, and has huge delay. You can tell who has bluetooth earphones (no matter the brand) on every call.

I still have a 6s with a headphone jack. I don't use headphones much, but do plug it into our cars (admittedly not as much of an issue lately). One has no bluetooth, one has incompatible bluetooth. Neither have USB input. Both are likely to last at least ten more years. One adapter per car is not going to be the end of the world, but it is an annoyance.

3.5 floppy and CD-ROM are replaced by something that does everything its predecessor does and better. Whereas bluetooth headphones are not 1:1 replacement of analog headphones. e.g. they have a battery, their audio quality is worse.

That's one more battery to manage. Perhaps a better comparison is wireless mouse or keyboard.

It’s unlikely people buying cheapest phone is going to get expensive Bluetooth headphones...

I realized I was not going to miss my headphone jack when I plugged in headphones and they didn’t work. Realized I hadn’t plugged in headphones for several months.

Ugh, this is not at all a valid comparison. It's extremely tired, too.

The phone MUST create analog audio signals, to drive its own speaker. Denying customers a connector to access it is petty and offensive. Compounding that offense is requiring every listening device to now incorporate redundant D/A converters. Contrary to apologists saying that this enables better quality, it in fact results in wholly unpredictable quality.

Not to mention that your ears will ALWAYS require analog audio. So do billions of amplification devices around the world.

There's no excuse.