Sony wants every phone to drop the 3.5mm jack because of their position in the wireless headphones market. Where I live most premium wireless headphones you see on the street are from Bose and Sony. They are everywhere and not specific to one age demographic. It's so funny it's like a wireless headphones commercial sometimes. I would not be surprised if Sony makes more money that way than by selling phones. Also, XZ2 preorders here come with free Sony 1000MX2 which cost more than 350€. This offer makes me wonder about the quality of the phone because you basically get a huge discount on a phone that just launched. You can call me a pessimist but I doubt Sony is just giving away premium devices.

"... major market trend..."

You mean "marketing trend".

Who decided this, the FEO? Are they shaving off pennies due to  being in the red?

Also isn't it funny how the "greenies" always want us to decrease our ecological footprint yet handset-makers do the exact opposite with their battery infested crap. Every jackass complains that my car runs on diesel yet they are silent with every minor thing being battery operated these days! F&king hypocrites!

Then the last but perhaps the most awkward thing of them all. High-end phones become more expensive every year yet we get less phone for our money.

We've already lost:

- user replaceable batteries
- SD-card slot (depending on how the wind blows I guess)
- ID blaster (introduced with much fanfare but silently removed thereafter)
- notification LED

and now the 3.5mm jack.

What did we get instead

- battery eating ridiculous high resolutions
- less space to properly swipe down
- unable to use phone with one hand due to elongated screens

The only real useful thing we got is USB type-C.

Also can all these idiots please use their brains! That jack is not ONLY used for headphones, you know?

Just to be clear, hires audio on 3.5jack is not the sam as high res on wireless. Wired audio is still superior in quality as it got not limited frequency(1-20Hz) and bit-stream(sony's max is about 900kbit, cd audio quality is about 1400, dvd is more, vinyl,...).
Also for audiophiles is better passive noise reduction(memory foam, 3-layered silicon plug), than digital noise cancellation. That is to say, if you listen to mp3s it doesn't matter, but uncomprimed wav/aiff is different story. And its not good enough even for comprimed flac, cannot be called same hires. Maybe we need new definition, like TruRes.
Lately even uncomprimed wav may be not the ultimate, as its still not binaural, so not truest to life.
Following trend is easy, leading is better.

Bull crap, Sony! Bull crap! >:(

Design reason bullcrap, they still have the heavy bezel design. Another reason to leave my love for sony phones