Bluetooth won’t replace the headphone jack — walled gardens will
Yesterday, Google announced the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, two phones I’ve been excited about for a while now. They have big screens, a delightfully playful design sensibility, and what promises to be a fascinating upgrade to the previous Pixel’s best-in-class camera.
They also don’t have headphone jacks.
Predictably, my Twitter replies exploded. Last year I wrote a piece calling the removal of headphone jacks from phones “user-hostile and stupid” in the lead-up to the iPhone 7 launch. Google and Samsung certainly weren’t shy in pointing out that their phones retained the 3.5mm connector, and now it’s gone from the Pixel 2. If Google and Apple agree on something, it has to be the correct decision, right?
