It’s hard to believe, but we’re rapidly approaching a decade since Apple — and Samsung, and Google, and so on — decided to all but kill the headphone jack, putting it out to pasture in lieu of true wireless earbuds and other Bluetooth accessories. It hasn’t always been a smooth ride, and even today’s best wireless headphones can run into bugs or glitches that make it impossible to have an easy listening experience (to say absolutely nothing of battery life woes). None of this means wired headphones have gone away, of course, and in fact, I’m not sure they ever fully will.
I recently reviewed this year’s Moto G Power 5G, and while I had a pretty bad time with the phone on the whole — it’s filled to the brim with adware, after all — it did have a couple of bright spots. One of those, naturally, was a 3.5mm jack, something you’ll really only find on budget smartphones these days, give or take a $1,500 Sony Xperia 1. And I’ll admit, I felt some pretty deep nostalgia for it. There’s something about a cheap pair of wired earbuds that brings me back to my days of listening to iPods or early smartphones in high school or college — I kind of love it.
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But when it was time to head back to (insert flagship daily driver of the week here), I had to leave my earbuds behind with it. Generally speaking, I find the pros of wireless audio — the freedom of movement and the lack of something tethered to my head, specifically — to outweigh however nostalgic I feel about wrapping a $10 pair of earbuds around an iPod nano right as class is starting. But that’s not necessarily true for everyone — in fact, based on previous wiredheadphone polls, I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of our readers have stuck with their trusty wired earbuds, even after years of Bluetooth-based sets.
I’m going to leave this as a pretty simple poll. Even if you regularly use a pair of Pixel Buds or Galaxy Buds with your smartphone, if you do occasionally switch to wired earbuds on Android, that’s a yes vote (and I’m including USB-C earbuds here as well; they just aren’t popular enough to warrant their own option). I’m also throwing in a choice for anyone who would use wired headphones if it meant not having to deal with a dongle, because, frankly, I think I find myself in that camp. Who even likes dongles anyway?
