Did you take my headphone jack?

Trending these days in the fast lane of high end hardware is the forced retirement of something most of us did not agree to. Our 3.5mm headphone jacks were stolen without our permission and for no functional reason other than you might have to scratch your ass while digging out your wallet to buy all those accessory dongles. “But, Matt… my phone is too fat” or “Muh no-bevels screen!” Stop with your technology dysmorphia. You’ve been lied to and it falls to me to rip off that band-aid. This will not be gentle.

First, something I’ve never heard a human being not complain about, battery life. We all need it.  We all crave more of it. No one gets home at the end of a long day to take your post day laboring poop to find you have 10% battery life remaining and think, “Boy, remember how much better poops were without smartphones!” And keep in mind, extra battery life’s benefits are not relegated simply to your excretions. Wouldn’t it be nice not to break out in a cold sweat every time you forget to charge your phone overnight? Well a 3.5mm headphone jack with all its rotundness, would provide some extra mAh space.  That shouldn’t be a problem though.  Especially with these fancy new batteries that have been “in the works” for almost 15 years, right?  

If I could get back all the moments of my life I’ve read about some brand-new battery tech that was going to revolutionize everything from laptops to cars and never came about, I’d be able to take a year off and do something totally useless like join Antifa or travel.  Instead we have lithium ion batteries. That wonderful super safe chemical concoction that keeps all our stuff mostly running. We’re pretty much stuck with this tech and if we want better battery life, we need bigger batteries, not slimmer phones. With the extra space created from putting both a no-bevel screen AND a 3.5mm jack, I’m sure you could cram an extra 500mAh in a cell phone, thus ensuring pleasurable and entertaining cell phone augmented pooping for all.

Speaking of throne thumbing your cell phone, one of my biggest fears has always been dropping my phone in a toilet. I’m not entirely sure which would be worse: a public toilet that you have yet to poop in with all its foreign dalliances, or your own toilet that you have already thoroughly destroyed. Either way, the bowl itself is my definite threshold of comfort for my cell phone.  With phones getting thinner and thinner, they’ve reached a point that I don’t even want a cell phone without a case. My 920 for example, is so damn thin, it is difficult to use without the added girth of a case. Forget trying to take pictures with the damn thing, and I don’t even have huge fingers. I can’t imagine how little of my loved ones I’d be capturing if I was photographing with the sausage fingers that many seem to be wielding these days. I’m not shaming.  I’m just commenting on poor design decisions for a target market. So, why do phones keep getting thinner if they are no longer functionally hefty?

Because manufacturers hate educating stupid consumers on why a thing like a cell phone being ‘too’ thin would be problematic. Instead, once consumers get a specification in their head, like contrast ratios on televisions, manufacturers will do anything, including making up fake and misleading specs (see contrast ratio) to advertise to consumers.

What do you folks think? Would you trade how thin your current phone is for increased battery life? How much are you willing to give up? Would you give up some screen size for some extra time? How about both and give me back my 3.5mm jack, damn it.