Jack-Off Hysteria Subsided Quickly

Nilay Patel’s review of the iPhone 7 for The Verge last year contained 31 references to the word “headphone”. Dieter Bohn’s review this week of the headphone-jack-less Essential Phone contains three, all in one paragraph:

There is no standard 3.5mm headphone jack, which is basically a trend now. But at least it ships with a USB-C dongle (though not USB-C headphones). Trends be damned, I’m going to continue to be a curmudgeon about it, if only because once this week I left both the dongle and my Bluetooth headphones at the office, so I couldn’t listen to music or podcasts the next day.

As I wrote last year, “Nilay’s review is going to age about as well as a 2007 review of the original iPhone that devoted the same amount of attention to the lack of a hardware keyboard.”

I think Bohn devoted exactly the right amount of attention to this — it’s certainly worth pointing out, and that’s about it. I did find it slightly curious that Bohn didn’t complain about the fact that the Essential Phone doesn’t even ship with a pair of USB-C headphones, though — you either have to use the included dongle or third-party Bluetooth headphones. Seems nickel-and-dimey for a $700 phone.

★ Tuesday, 22 August 2017