It’s been more than three years since OnePlus made its debut in the smartphone industry with its OnePlus One that arrived with some seriously great specifications at a cheaper pricing than the flagships from companies like Samsung, HTC, LG, etc. at that time. And for no surprise, it was called the ‘Flagship Killer’ device. In the past three years, the company has launched OnePlus One, OnePlus 2, OnePlus X, OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T and the OnePlus 5. The next smartphone is the OnePlus 5T, and it is already officially confirmed that 5T is launching this month. Today, the company revealed that it is not going to ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack yet and explained the reasons for this on the official forum.
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REASONS WHY ONEPLUS IS STICKING WITH THE 3.5MM HEADPHONE JACK ON ONEPLUS 5T
One the official forum, the Founder, and CEO of OnePlus, Pete Leu explained the reasons to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack –
First, audio quality. When we surveyed the OnePlus community, 70% of users told us that their priority was sound quality. On the whole, wireless earbuds aren’t there yet to provide the same quality of audio. Are the best wireless headphones comparable to the best of the wired? That’s possible. But as you get closer to the under $200 category, the options are more limited. Keeping the headphone jack allows our users to continue to take full advantage of the excellent range of audio choices on the market. Not to mention our Bullet V2 earphones. 
Second, user freedom. Nearly 80% of our users use in-jack headphones. At one point, we thought about using another USB-C port to replace the 3.5 mm audio port. The advantage to USB-C is that it would have let us further slim down our flagships. However, the question we asked ourselves was whether replacing the 3.5 mm jack with a USB-C port would bring a noticeably improved experience for our users. In other words, is it worth the trade-off? And our assessment was no; this design decision was not worth taking away our users’ freedom to use their favorite earphones and accessories.
Well, it is good to know that OnePlus is not following the trend of ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack and we have seen companies like Apple, Google, HTC, Xiaomi, Huawei etc following this trend. We cannot say if we will see the 3.5mm headphone jack on next year’s OnePlus 6 but hopefully, the headphone jack is here to stay. What are your opinions? Do let us know via the comments section.