It is happening: Samsung to launch top-tier phone with no headphone jack

The headphone jack has been a hot topic over the last couple of years. It's an extremely popular connection port, used for headphones (duh), portable speakers, car audio, and even your home Hi-Fi. But the headphone jack on smartphones, in particular, has been on borrowed time ever since Apple decided to omit it in its iPhone 7. Over the past couple of years, a ton of smartphone manufacturers — big and small — have followed in Apple's footsteps and removed it from their devices.

Samsung and LG are pretty much the last popular brands to put headphone jacks in their top-tier phones still. However, rumors do suggest that Samsung will be giving up on the connector with the Galaxy S10 or Galaxy Note 10.

Now, there are the hopeful among us, who say "No, no, there's still a chance that Samsung wouldn't do that!". Well, here's some more proof that this may, indeed, be the direction that the manufacturer is headed into.

Some hardcore Samsung fans may be aware that the company makes this really cool-looking clamshell Android phone, but only sells it in China. It's the Samsung W series, built specifically for that market, because — according to Samsung — the customers in China are very big on nostalgia and love the good ol' clamshells of the 90s and early 2000s. A Samsung W phone will have all the top-tier hardware, such as the latest Snapdragon processor and a ton of RAM inside, as well as some of Samsung's latest premium features, which later make it to the Galaxy S. The variable aperture of the Galaxy S9's camera was actually first featured on last year's Samsung W2018, for example.



So, all that said, the Samsung W2019, which should be released in a month or two if Samsung follows the annual refresh schedule, has just leaked via a series of up-close pictures. In the images, we can see that it is still made all out of metal and oozes premium build quality. Also seen in the pictures — there is no headphone jack.

Also, here's another amusing note — users are usually pretty angry when the headphone jack is absent on a phone that costs $1,000 or even $1,500. Well, the Samsung W2018 cost $3,000 in China on release and speculation suggests that the W2019 will launch for the same price. Ouch!