I write this as I am on a plane using $7 only semi-functioning headphones to watch a movie… This is because of course, the in-flight entertainment system doesn’t support wireless headphones. The nice new multi-hundred dollar headphones I bought for the pixel 2 won’t work for the movie… My old Bose noise canceling would have worked for the in-flight but can’t work for the Pixel 2 (adapters never around / totally broken). I started this post on my flight out, on my return flight I had to buy the airlines headphones as I couldn’t get to my wired headphones buried in my back in the overhead bin, with only my wireless headphones in reach. The current situation of headphones is far worse than it was a few years ago.

Why Buy a Phone without a Headphone Jack?

Well based on the latest flagship phones from Android and Apple, you don’t really have a choice as they are forcing the wireless issue on customers. I bought the pixel 2 despite the missing headphone jack because the new camera and portrait mode photos are truly awesome. I could have got a worse camera to buy a phone that still had a headphone jack, but in a couple years I am guessing that won’t even be an option.

Experience Moving To A Jackless Phone

I bought a Pixel2, but that detail really it doesn’t matter. It has been a horrible consumer experience ever since. I want to detail in this post the dozens of times I have had a worse experience since moving to a phone with wireless audio.

• I have been caught out with my wired headphones in my bag, pocket, and no dongle adapter dozens of times, each meaning I couldn’t listen to my device.
• I have $200+ nice Bose noise cancelling headphones (the best headphones I have ever had), made fairly useless as they are wired
• My barely year old phones wired USB-C “adapter” stopped working… It worked at first, then only some of the time when you wiggled it, and no longer works at all.
• At all times my backpack needs to contain wired/wireless headphones as well as an adapter
• The same Bose headphones I liked so much in a wireless version are about $400, even as my older pair work perfectly fine
• I have been out with my wireless headphones only to have their battery die, or try to use them finding they are already dead… Or even more annoying start to give a low battery beep at nearly max volume ever few minutes.
• The audio drops in an out randomly requiring repairing of the phone to headphones, this doesn’t happen often anymore but still never had issues like this with wired headphones
• My phone has been paired with my headphones which were in some other room and I can hear audit taking me awhile to realize what is going on
• My headphones have refuse to pair for whatever reason (likely paired to something else at the moment)
• I am not even an audiophile and the quality difference is noticable
  • I bought some really nice wireless headphones and my old Bose far are still better
• My wireless headphones seem to try to do actions every time I touch any part of them, which I often have to do as they don’t stay on as well as my Bose
• Can’t get to correct headphones needed as I only took one set out of my bag before putting in the overhead bin.

This is not a feature

In no way has removing the headphone jack improved my customer experience. I had wireless headphones for my Pixel 1 and it had a headphone jack which I used about 75% of the time using the wireless only on occasion. Now as I am forced to use wireless headphones I just listen to podcasts and music on my phone about much less than I used to. I end up in one of the situations above so often I don’t trust audio to be available without significantly planning and testing prior to leaving the house. I am now considering just using an older phone or another device as a dedicate audio device because this experience sucks so much. I have a young child which means when I get him to fall asleep in my lap and don’t have all the right combinations of dongles, headphones, or charged wireless headphones in arms reach I am just not going to get to listen to anything. Which happened to me on my two most recent flights when traveling with Theo… Sitting quietly while the baby sleep son my lap, thinking about how angry I am that Apple and Google both decided to ignore the numerous consumer requests to keep their damn headphone jack.