OnePlus 6T Is About To Make A Huge Mistake
The OnePlus 6T won't have a headphone jack, and I'm less than impressed. Just as I was with the Pixel 2, I find myself disappointed that one of the last headphone jack holdouts in the smartphone business is about to fold. While competitors in the OnePlus price margin continue to keep their jacks overseas, here in the United States we're nearly bankrupt for jacks.
The absence of the headphone jack from the next OnePlus smartphone was confirmed by none other than OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei. While Pei didn't mention the OnePlus 6T by name, he did confirm that the "next OnePlus handset," would not have a headphone jack. When pressed on why said jack not included, Pei gave similar answers to those given by Apple, Razer, and others.
SEE TOO: Our OnePlus 6 Review (complete with jack)
"You've got to make decisions that optimize the user experience, and understand that at times things that provide user value can also add friction," said Pei to TechRadar. "We found that 59% of our community already owned wireless headphones earlier this year... If we were to do that two years ago, the percentage would have been much lower and it would have caused a lot of friction in our users."
Pei pointed out that removing the headphone jack component from the phone meant they were able to "put more new technology into the product." While Pei did not confirm what this meant, it would well be pointing toward the in-display fingerprint reader and/or a bigger battery. Pei did mention "improved battery life" in the interview immediately after mentioning the addition of new components after the headphone jack was removed – so we'll see.
Apparently the OnePlus 6T will come with a headphone jack adapter in the box, similar to what Apple and Google did with their first non-jacked smartphones. So maybe things wont be as awful as they seemed at first?
The last apparent minority of users that'll never be OK with the removal of the jack is the in-car AUX audio user. There, the solution is always going to need to be a headphone jack. Unless there's a better way to reliably have both power (USB power) in and audio out at once. For OnePlus to remove that convenience is certainly a bummer for this crowd.
Maybe what I'm saying is that OnePlus releasing phones in the future without headphone jacks is a huge mistake if I am their only customer. And I, of course, am not. If now's the time to switch over to this future in which a little extra battery and/or other oddities of which we've not yet heard are more important, then so be it. I'll just be over here crying in the corner... again!
NOTE: The mockup at the head of this article comes from designer Mint on Dribble. Neato!