Many iPhone users don’t even think about the absence of a headphone jack. The bluetooth market is growing, and many people use bluetooth on a daily basis to listen to music, watch TV, play games, make calls, and more. However, just a few years ago, the removal of the headphone jack was a huge deal that everyone was talking about. Many people were upset with Apple for their decision, so why did they drop a feature of the phone that was essential to so many?

The loss of the headphone jack first occurred in the iPhone 7, but it actually had more to do with the iPhone X. During the release of the iPhone 7, many other smartphone companies had been maximizing their screen space by utilizing the previously unused black space above the screen. This was a major hit to Apple since they had not yet jumped on this trend. However, what many of Apple’s major competitors were unable to do was lose the unused space below the screen.

The reason that the space at the bottom was so hard to lose, even for phones without home buttons, was because the controller of the phones was typically housed in that space. Apple’s engineers realized that they could fold their flexible controller underneath so that the wasted space was gone. However, if the controller was folded up and under, this prohibited the headphone jack from being able to fit.

The first time Apple released a smartphone without any wasted space at the bottom of the screen was the iPhone X, but Apple decided to do it early so that users wouldn’t be unpleasantly surprised. They did this for two reasons. 

First, this would improve the waterproof ability of the phone. A headphone jack is the easiest way for water to enter, so without the headphone jack, it would be a lot harder for that water to get in. Secondly, removing the ability to use wired headphones would promote their new product: AirPods, which were released simultaneously with the iPhone 7. Before, paying extra to eliminate the wires on headphones seemed unnecessary to many people when they could continue using their older headphones and still get the same feature. However, without a headphone jack, wireless earbuds became crucial for anyone who wanted to listen to music on an iPhone. Demand for the wireless earbuds would increase, giving Apple an easier way to sell their AirPods.

Taking away the headphone jack was also a way of softening the blow of the controversial iPhone X release. It was vastly different from Apple’s other products, with its removed home button, its notch, and its $1,000 price tag. Because they were already revealing so many new things with the iPhone X, the removal of the headphone jack was one less things customers could be unpleasantly surprised with.

To customers, Apple’s decision may have seemed unthoughtful or unwise, but on the contrary, much consideration went into Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack all those years ago.