Samsung kills headphone jack in its new phone, a first for the company

MANILA, Philippines – Samsung had, at several times in the past, made fun of the fact its main rival Apple – and to a lesser extent, Huawei and several other phone makers – removed the headphone jack from some of their phones.

This week, Samsung finally joined the fray. Their new phone, the Samsung Galaxy A8s, ditched the traditional 3.5 mm audio port, leaving users to either use a Bluetooth or USB-C pair or use a USB-C-to-3.5 mm adapter. 

In the past, Samsung had touted the fact their phones retained the use of the headphone jack. That changed on Monday, December 10, the date of the reveal of the A8s at an event held in China, as reported by GizmoChina.

The A8s isn’t only the first Samsung phone to lose the jack. It’s also the first phone to feature a laser-drilled hole on one corner of the screen, containing the camera. Samsung calls it the Infinity-O display, which it announced earlier in November.

It’s Samsung’s solution to the same problem that the notch solved: having a spot to put a front camera on a display with no bezels. 

Apple popularized the notch with the iPhone X back in 2017, with several other phone makers following the design. Samsung wasn’t one of them, however, likely as Apple was their biggest rival. 

While this is the first modern Samsung smartphone to not have an audio jack, some future models may still get the jack, including the upcoming Galaxy S10 flagship. 

The A8s’ other key features include a Snapdragon 710 chip, a 6.4-inch display with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio, 6 to 8 GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and Android 8.1 Oreo. It has 3 rear cameras: a standard one, a telephoto lens, and one for bokeh. A 24-megapixel camera resides in the front hole.

No price and availability details have been announced. – Rappler.com