With an increasing number of manufacturers starting to ditch the 3.5mm audio port in favor of USB-C, it is now the turn for Honor to possibly get rid of the legacy technology in its upcoming Honor 9 smartphone, if leaked renders said to be of the upcoming device are anything to go by. While the first set of leaked images last month did nothing to reveal the absence of the 3.5mm port, a couple of new leaked renders are what’s fueling the latest round of speculations about whether the upcoming Honor flagship smartphone will indeed do away with the decades-old technology that’s still used extensively by manufacturers and consumers on their smartphones, computers, televisions and portable music players.
As can be seen, the device portrayed in the image above does seem to lack the 3.5mm audio port. There’s a USB Type-C port flanked by the speaker grills on what seems to be the bottom of the device, while the top has a minimalist look with what looks like a noise-canceling secondary microphone. Of course, it is difficult to ascertain the legitimacy of the images, so we’ll simply have to wait for an official confirmation from Honor before saying with any degree of certainly that this is indeed the end of the road for the 3.5mm audio jack on flagship Honor devices going forward. If that is indeed the case, the Chinese tech giant will be in good company, seeing as Apple and HTC have already done away with the legacy technology in their respective flagships, with many other brands also tipped to follow suit in the near future.
While the latest set of purported images of the Honor 9 reveals the absence of a 3.5mm audio port, earlier leaks have revealed that just like its predecessor, the upcoming device will also ship with a dual-camera setup on the back. There will, however, be one significant design change compared to the Honor 8, if all the leaked info is anything to go by. While the current Honor flagship has a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, its successor is expected to come with a fingerprint scanner located on the front. Other than that, the upcoming model doesn’t look a whole lot different from its predecessor, but with all the leaked images coming from unofficial sources, it is important to take the information with a grain of salt.
