Like an increasing number of smartphones, Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone doesn’t feature a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
However, unlike like most of the other devices that have ditched the headphone jack, the Essential’s modularity is set to add the port back to the smartphone.
In a Reddit AMA with Andy Rubin, the smartphone’s creators, and other employees at Essential, the company confirmed that a 3.5mm headphone jack ‘Click Accessory’ is on its way.
“We are under development on a number of Click Connector accessories. The first available should be the charging dock. We are also actively developing a high end audio accessory to support a 3.5mm jack. We are continuing to look at supporting ideas, like cameras,” reads the Reddit post.
The Click Accessory will feature a high-quality DAC, allowing users to submit a standard pair of 3.5mm headphones into the smartphone.
During the AMA many Reditors wanted to know why Essential didn’t opt to put a headphone jack in the Essential Phone in the first place. Essential responded by stating that removing the headphone jack was part of how the company made the device almost bezel-less.
“Headphone jacks are pretty big components and they don’t play nice with all-screen Phone architectures. We studied it very seriously, but fitting a headphone jack into our Phone required tradeoffs we were uncomfortable with. We’d have grow a huge ‘chin’ in the display and reduce the battery capacity by 10 person, or we’d need a huge headphone bump! We decided it was more important to have a beautiful full-screen display in a thin device with solid battery life. Then we made sure we to build ya’ll a high-quality DAC in a tiny adapter that can elegantly live on your headphones,” reads the post.
Unsurprisingly, many readers weren’t happy with this answer. They brought up the fact that smartphones with very thin bezels, such as the LG V30, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8/S8, which both still feature standard headphone jacks.
Currently there is no release date for this particular Click Accessory from Essential.
Source: Reddit, Via: TechCrunch
