Weekend Discussion: Have your opinions about the headphone jack and display notch changed?

[Redaktion]

It's been two years since Apple introduced the iPhone X and three years since the iPhone 7. Consumers and media were having a cow about the end of headphone jacks as we know it and the eyesore of an asymmetric display. Now that everyone has had a couple of years to take it all in, do people still care about these quirks on their smartphones?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Weekend-Discussion-Have-your-opinions-about-the-headphone-jack-and-display-notch-changed.442136.0.html

[railroad_jerk]

I will never buy again a smartphone without a headphone jack.
I've been an owner of Huawei P20 Pro for two years and I'm not a big fan of BT headphones so I've struggled without 3.5mm jack since you cannot recharge it while headphones are inside and even those ad hoc extensions that allow you to recharge and listen at the same time are of poor quality either producing rattling sound or assembled poorly and none of them permit to super-charge your phone, but I must admit they help a little bit as long as you keep it with you all the time.

[waaaaaaaa]

I think what's more important is the lack of anymore truly compact phones.

[Jack lover]

I have both wired and wireless headphones.
Since Sony removed headphone jacks, I am switching to LG now.
Never going to buy a phone without a headphone jack.

About Notch - I hide it in settings and don't mind the bezel look.

All these 700-1000€ phones dont work as well as a physical fingerprint reader, have speakers that usually sound worst etc.

I can only hope Enthusiast brands continue to make phones for us Audiophiles and users using their phones for more than social media and casual use.

[Andy M]

Well, if it has a notch, then it's a big no no ! Even a teardrop one. I would find phones with bezel more attractive than phones with large screen to body ratio but a notch...

As for the headphone jack, if you find one on a new phone you hit the jackpot. We all know why they ditch it, and it somehow always coincide with the manufacturer dropping a new wireless audio solution ... I don't like that one bit...

[Applel]

I will never buy a smartphone without a headphone jack.

[S.Yu]

The headphone jack is still non-negotiable. The notch is...barely acceptable tradeoff, if it means the jack and other advantages like the dedicated DAC in the case of LG.

[frogg]

I think i will keep my Sony XZ1C forever for numerous reasons; headphone jack, long battery life, sturdy, 16:9 screen ratio, light in the pocket. I will even buy 2 for spare parts and will do the maintenance myself. I hate the smartphone industry.

[heffeque]

After a few months with the Mi 9T, if I had double the money to spend, I'd still buy a 9T (maybe the Pro Premium versions): it has a jack, it is all screen, it isn't huge, the battery life is fantastic, the performance is great and pictures on the main camera are much better quality than I expected.

Only things that I would change would be better quality for the rest of the cameras. Everything else... can't complain!

[Daniel Eriksson]

I would still not buy a phone that either has a notch or lacks a 3.5 mm port.

I use the 3.5 mm port in all sorts of scenarios so I won't give that up. As for the notch it's just so pointless. Why would I even want a device that is almost all screen? The little bars of non-screen is actually useful if you want to hand a phone over to someone to display a video, for example, without them accidentally touching something and removing said video...

No, less screen, more phone for me. I especially want real buttons for Back/Home/Recent. Virtual ones I accentally push all the time when I don't want to and the disaster that is Googles "pill" I won't even discuss...

Oh, and sorry for coming off so bitter. But it really feels like these devices become less and less what I want for each year. I had a perfect device in 2011 (Nokia E7), which I kept to 2016 when it stopped working. Since then things have just declined...

[Dice]

The 3.5mm audio jack is too useful to give up. I just bought a mobile speaker to use with my phone and tablet and passed up a cheaper model without a jack (wtf?) to get a more expensive one with it. Since I'm not quite happy with the bluetooth function (it's a bit buggy with my phone and way too loud with my tablet), I'm relieved to have the audio cable option for when I really need reliable audio output.
As for the notches... I haven't had a device with a notch yet and I think I'll avoid them if I can. I don't mind bezels at all, it's nice to have someplace to grab the phone/tablet without tapping all over the screen.
Many of the new features in recent years seem to have been invented for novelty or show-off purposes rather than useability. >__>
I get that there are people who need to run around and show everyone their ultra-thin, all-screen, foldable, portless phone, but that's not me.

[HZ]

My 2010 Samsung smartphone had a slide-out physical keyboard, was nice and small and had, of course, a rectangular screen, physical menu/home/back keys AND a 3,5mm jack. I would have liked it to last forever, which in today's terms it sort of did, but unfortunately (maybe due to a fall) recently it started to become more and more unreliable.
In my reluctant search for a replacement I was sort-of 'shocked' by the aesthetically rather unpleasing notch phenomenon, the 3,5mm (or lack thereof) trend and the sheer size of most smartphones today.
So this week I settled for a Nokia 5.1 Plus, which is an 'older' model but I much preferred it over the newer 2019 (and even bigger...) models from several brands. It has its home and back keys on-screen, which is fine by me, and it DOES have a 3,5mm jack which was an absolute requirement. It does have a (rather wide, by today's trends) notch. The advantage is a more generous allocation of space to the earpiece, which is good by my more practical standards. Visually, on this (Android One) phone, it was acceptable to me because the area of the screen the notch is in is exactly matched in software with a darker band with neatly rounded upper corners that smoothly run from the physical side limits of the screen to this artificial 'bezel'. Notification icons are displayed crisply within the two bits of darkened screen left and right of the notch. Probably because I never run a screen on full brightness the darkened band is almost like a physical bezel with two little sub-displays in it for the notification icons. To me, if you have to have a notch (including its said physical and practical advantages), to me this is the more pleasing way to implement it.

[Adam_F]

I'm with @frogg - there is no decent upgrade path for our XZ1 Compacts. Mi 9T is only phone I'm considering, but i don't like the size so I'll eke as much life as i can out of the Sony.

I actually quite like the feel in hand of the iPhone X/Xs/11 Pro. Even finding  iOS less of a turn-off these days, but notch and lack of headphone jack are still deal breakers after 3 years.

Oh and Samsung did OK with the S10e, but battery life is poor compared with XZ1C and there's a horrible black spot in the corner of the screen....

[VL]

Phone producers've concentrated on nonessential gimmicks in the absence of real innovations.  Several camera holes accompanied several flashes, screen to bezel ratio or curved all glass body, 120hz screens, face recognition and multiple ways to unlock the phone, no physical buttons or removing audio jack. I want one camera with good low light capabilities. I want sturdy fall-proof body with flat bright screen and protected corners. I want long life and I don't care about unlocking , quite frankly I prefer responsive fingerprint scanner as a home button whether physically present or under the screen, small bezels on top and under the screen will not change my opinion about phone. I want decent audio output so I can connect my portable amplifier and sennheisers, I don't want to be limited to Bluetooth overcomressed and buggy sound. and I still want to charge and listen to music at the same time

[Artem]

First, I was very worried about the 3.5mm jack when I was first buying iPhone 7 Plus. Sometime after I realized that there I don't miss my old headphones, while bundled Apple headphones are just more. Moreover, I bought Bluetooth headphones for the gym and since then have never thought about 3.5 mm again.

The same happened recently when I was purchasing iPhone 11 pro. In fact, I tried many Android phones because I thought the notch is a deal-breaker.
Nevertheless, I decided to return to iOS because of software experience but was very concerned that notch will ruin that experience. Guess what?! Two weeks of iPhone use I didn't have a single day when I thought that the notch was a problem. I fact I rarely notice it because I look somewhere in the middle of the screen most of the time.

In conclusion, I think that much of the notch/whole discussion is driven by media and gadget enthusiasts but not normal people. Most of us care more about reliability, ease of use and compatibility rather than such insignificant things like notch, 3.5mm, fast charge, etc. Moreover, I think opinion-leaders such as Notebookchek should focus on what is really important for most but not the few. Cheers!