> They could have supported both without compromising either
I find this a little hard to believe. If there really are no compromises to continuing to support the 3.5mm jack, then I would expect other phone manufacturers to continue support on their flagship devices, and hammer Apple for removing it.
I think in reality, mobile devices are so small, that having a single purpose port just doesn’t make sense. The 3.5mm port is larger in volume than a USB-C port, and USB-C is quite capable of carrying analog audio. I don’t see why any manufacturer would continue paying the cost of a 3.5mm port, when it’s so trivially rolled into other existing ports on the device.
I also suspect that the current domination of wireless headphone would have occurred even if the 3.5mm jack had stayed. After all it’s trivially easy to adapt a pair of wired headphones for a USB-C port or lightning port, and yet people still choose wireless headphones.
3.5mm audio jack is ubiquitous and universal--just like USB--and is audio is a very common, if not the most common, peripheral. Manufactures use port loss opportunity to try to push to you buy wireless new earbuds or a new wireless charging setup (that doesn't compete on wired charging speed or ubiquity). Consumers are probably choosing wireless earbuds though because the dongle adds weight and inconvenience to what would otherwise be a standard audio port popular for decades--and many low-to-mid-end and feature phones still have the port because the target demographics aren't ones that are going to just go out and buy all new gear just to support the lifestyle a phone is pushing on them; consumers certainly aren't choosing wireless for their price, sound quality, or build quality, or repairability in comparison to wired options.
I could get on board with the idea iff, phone manufactures had dual USB-C jacks (ideally one at the bottom and one at the side and this could make it easier to consume landscape content like movies/games). Right now you have to choose between audio or power delivery with one port (or have a massive dongle that's half the size of the phone).
I don't disagree with your arguments but its hard not to point out the obvious conflict of interest with companies dropping the headphone jack while selling their own wireless headphones as the solution, both to the lack of headphone jack and to the fear of technical issues that BT headphones had at the time. I don't think we can really use the removal as evidence on its own when Apple, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, Oppo, etc. all got a jump on a multi-billion dollar market because of their position as a device OEM.
The only real exceptions are Asus and Sony who are both targeting niche buyers with most of their phone offerings.
And if I can't find a feature phone soon that actually meets my needs, I'll be looking at picking up a last gen Asus or Sony phone when a new one drops to replace my aging/security-updates-no-longer-coming device. KaiOS 3.x phones are only in the US and aren't developer-friendly models. I'd love to see Linux phones take off, but having toyed around with Ubuntu Touch and postmarketOS, it's not really daily-drivable stuff that you could rely on. Luckily it seems OmniROM are consistently pumping out microG-supported options for Zenfones--whereas Sony the custom ROM scene appears weak likely due to the cost of the devices.
I find this a little hard to believe. If there really are no compromises to continuing to support the 3.5mm jack, then I would expect other phone manufacturers to continue support on their flagship devices, and hammer Apple for removing it.
I think in reality, mobile devices are so small, that having a single purpose port just doesn’t make sense. The 3.5mm port is larger in volume than a USB-C port, and USB-C is quite capable of carrying analog audio. I don’t see why any manufacturer would continue paying the cost of a 3.5mm port, when it’s so trivially rolled into other existing ports on the device.
I also suspect that the current domination of wireless headphone would have occurred even if the 3.5mm jack had stayed. After all it’s trivially easy to adapt a pair of wired headphones for a USB-C port or lightning port, and yet people still choose wireless headphones.