Really? Samsung Ditched the Headphone Jack After Years of Ridiculing Apple

Samsung recently took the wraps off its latest Galaxy-branded smartphone: the A8s. The A8s is a mid-range device destined for the Chinese market later this month, and it boasts a slew of impressive design and hardware advancements, including the first employment of a nearly edge-to-edge Infinity-O display.

While this massive 6.4-inch LCD touchscreen panel — which features a small o-shaped cut-out in the upper left-hand corner, housing a front-facing selfie camera — is arguably among the new handset’s most impressive feature offerings, the device also represents Samsung’s first modern smartphone to ship without a traditional 3.5mm headphone jack. 

While Samsung’s move to omit an auxiliary jack on its latest smartphone isn’t exactly newsworthy in itself, it is when considering how the company has openly mocked Apple over the last two years over its own decision to omit the auxiliary headphone jack from its recent iPhones.

Back in 2016, while unveiling its self-combustible Galaxy Note 7, Samsung’s marketing chief Justin Denison took at least one thinly-veiled swipe at Apple’s rumored decision to nix the 3.5mm jack on its then-upcoming iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.

“Want to know what else it comes with?” Denison asked the audience. “An audio jack. I’m just saying,” he smirked, invoking laughter from those in attendance.

Carrying-on with the rhetoric, Samsung earlier this year released a series of televised advertisements promoting its latest Galaxy S9 flagships — with the company, in one ad specifically, mocking the iPhone X’s omission of a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The short clip, provided below for your enjoyment, features a customer at an Apple Store who asks an employee if he can use his wired headphones with the iPhone X, to which the employee responds, yes, but that he’ll need a Lightning to 3.5mm dongle to do it. The customer then inquires about charging at the same time, to which the same employee adds that he’ll need yet another dongle. 

“So, a double dongle,” the customer quips.

It’s unclear why Samsung ultimately caved and followed the same strategy it so openly talked smack on for the last several years. But it’s reasonable to assume that, just like Apple, Samsung was also looking hard for ways to maximize internal space without sacrificing power or performance.

Similar to modern iPhones including the 7, 8, X, XS Max and XR, the Galaxy A8s can be outfitted with USB-C to 3.5mm jack adapter for those who prefer traditional earbuds.

According to the latest reporting by South Korea’s own ET News, Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S10 flagships are slated to retain the 3.5mm headphone jack — although the company is expected to nix the iconic port on its mid-2019 Galaxy Note 10 and early-2020 Galaxy S11.