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This does not seem to make sense given the sentiments I've seen from reviewers and consumers. Pixel 3A: widely praised for having a headphone jack Pixel 4A: w

This does not seem to make sense given the sentiments I've seen from reviewers and consumers. Pixel 3A: widely praised for having a headphone jack Pixel 4A: widely praised for still having a headphone jack Pixel 5A: widely praised for still having a headphone jack Pixel 6A: no headphone jack Personally, I am not ready to give up the headphone jack. I wish I could go fully wireless, but bluetooth audio is too frustrating to use in many cases. For example, my family has a bluetooth speaker. Managing and switching whose phone was paired via bluetooth was so annoying. There was frequently a mismatch between the device we wanted to be connected, and the device that was actually connected. We eventually reverted to just plugging our phones into the audio-in port of the speaker. Unplugging and plugging is quick, simple, and doesn't require fiddling with device menus. Guests don't have to endure the tedious "pairing" ritual. Of course, we have to have dongles anyway... Another example is in rental cars. For one, pairing and switching devices with car media systems is dreadful. I've also had frequent problems, with multiple different phones and multiple different cars, where audio media and satnav announcements would not switch properly over bluetooth, such that the satnav announcements would get cut off. On the other hand, the "aux" port works flawlessly 100% of the time with no fiddling. Never travel without at 3.5mm audio cable. If the wireless audio implementations were more user friendly, I think many current headphone jack holdouts would happily cut the cord.

neilsense 4y ago
It makes perfect sense. Reviewers want something to differentiate it from the iPhone and to rave about, so they choose the headphone jack. Whereas users, and Google absolutely has the data for this, are probably mostly using bluetooh ear pods or headphones and so Google knows real users don't care.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  The times I use the 3,5mm jack on my phone are few and far between. However if I didn't have that option at those times I wouldn't have had anything else to hand (eg no Bluetooth headset nearby or battery dead) so those few times are really important to me. This is something you don't really get from just looking at data.
- mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
  > Whereas users, and Google absolutely has the data for this, are probably mostly using bluetooh ear pods or headphones and so Google knows real users don't care. Well... what it really means is most users don't care but that also means they probably don't care (at least not directly) if there is a headphone jack. Those who are using headphone jacks regularly absolutely do care though. I'm not suggesting they haven't done a lot of market research here, I am sure they have. What I will say is that they should be careful of frog boiling themselves out of a market. Having a headphone jack is one of those things that differentiated the Pixel from an iPhone. Sure most users who prefer a Pixel to an iPhone probably won't jump over this one specific thing.... but the less differentiated they become over time the less sticky customers looking for something different to iPhones will be for them, and this won't easily show up in market research because they are asking things like "If we remove feature X would you buy a different phone? What if we remove Y?" but may not be asking "What if we remove X and we remove Y?"

neilsense 4y ago

It makes perfect sense. Reviewers want something to differentiate it from the iPhone and to rave about, so they choose the headphone jack. Whereas users, and Google absolutely has the data for this, are probably mostly using bluetooh ear pods or headphones and so Google knows real users don't care.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
The times I use the 3,5mm jack on my phone are few and far between. However if I didn't have that option at those times I wouldn't have had anything else to hand (eg no Bluetooth headset nearby or battery dead) so those few times are really important to me. This is something you don't really get from just looking at data.
mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
> Whereas users, and Google absolutely has the data for this, are probably mostly using bluetooh ear pods or headphones and so Google knows real users don't care. Well... what it really means is most users don't care but that also means they probably don't care (at least not directly) if there is a headphone jack. Those who are using headphone jacks regularly absolutely do care though. I'm not suggesting they haven't done a lot of market research here, I am sure they have. What I will say is that they should be careful of frog boiling themselves out of a market. Having a headphone jack is one of those things that differentiated the Pixel from an iPhone. Sure most users who prefer a Pixel to an iPhone probably won't jump over this one specific thing.... but the less differentiated they become over time the less sticky customers looking for something different to iPhones will be for them, and this won't easily show up in market research because they are asking things like "If we remove feature X would you buy a different phone? What if we remove Y?" but may not be asking "What if we remove X and we remove Y?"