We told you several times that the Galaxy Note 10 would not feature a headphone jack, and the rumor turned out to be true. Samsung was a staunch supporter of the headphone jack, using it as a marketing trick to lure in customers who didn’t like Apple’s decision to remove the jack from its iPhones. Of course, every other notable company in the business copied the move, including Google, OnePlus, Huawei, and many others. It took longer than I had anticipated, but it finally happened. Samsung can no longer stand by the 3.5mm port, dropping it from the Note 10 phone nearly three years after Apple did it on the iPhone 7. And there’s no better time to revisit a Samsung TV commercial that the company really hopes we’ve all forgotten.
Remember how Samsung likes to mock Apple’s iPhone in ads? It did it last year too as part of its Note 9 campaign when it released the following commercial where an iPhone user is complaining to a fake Apple employee about the headphone jack on a device identified as the “Ten.”
Yes, it’s the iPhone X, but the smartphone user never uses the word “iPhone.” Coincidentally, Samsung also decided to kill the headphone jack on a “Ten” device, the Note 10. “Can I still use these headphones with the ten?” the actor in the ad asks. It’s hilarious and incredibly ironic.
Samsung, of course, fixed its Note 10 headphone jack the same way Apple did. You have a USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle and USB-C headphones in the box.
But why did Samsung kill the jack? Apparently, we’re looking at two distinct reasons, including battery life and improved haptic feedback. A Samsung rep told The Verge that removing the port allowed Samsung to increase the battery size by 100mAh, which doesn’t seem like much. Furthermore, Samsung improved the haptic feedback by removing the hollow cavity needed for the jack. Because the S Pen stylus slot definitely isn’t a much, much larger hollow cavity.
When Google killed the Pixel’s audio jack, the company explained that it needed to do it to create all-screen phones, and that’s an explanation that’s a lot better than Samsung’s bogus explanation. It’s also why Apple did it three years ago.
By the way, Samsung, deleting those old commercials won’t help you. It’s beyond embarrassing. We all know what you did.