The Razer Phone is a high-end gaming smartphone from Singaporean company Razer and it’s a powerful device by all means, but people have been wondering why it doesn’t have a headphone jack. Apple started this whole trend last year, when it ditched the headphone jack in its iPhone 7 line. The move sparked a great deal of controversy, but it also inspired other device makers to follow suit and release handsets without a 3.5mm headphone jack. The new Razer Phone is one of them, and the company’s CEO, Min-Liang Tan, has now taken to Facebook to explain why his company made this decision.
Razer is renowned worldwide for its gaming hardware, but so far it has stayed away from the smartphone space. The Razer Phone is its very first smartphone and it stirred plenty of interest, but the lack of a headphone jack or water-resistance also sparked some mixed reactions. Tan’s Facebook post comes in response to the feedback Razer has received for the gaming smartphone. First, it’s said that by ditching the headphone jack from the Razer Phone, the company managed to considerably increase the device’s battery size. The Razer Phone ships with a massive 4,000mAh battery and Min-Liang Tan estimates that if the Razer Phone had a headphone jack, its battery would have been roughly 500mAh smaller.
At the same time, by removing the headphone jack the company also managed to significantly improve the device’s thermals, which in turn translates to a better performance. The Razer Phone has a IGZO IPS LCD display with a QHD resolution (2,560 x 1,440 pixels) and a 120Gz refresh rate, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, and 8GB of RAM, all of which require some serious resources. The Razer CEO reckons that ditching the headphone jack was a trade-off, but it allowed for better audio quality with built-in 24-bit DAC, a higher battery capacity, and better performance overall. It may not have been an easy decision, but it was worth it, according to the CEO. Moreover, Tan also highlights that each Razer Phone came with an adapter included in the box and people can use wireless or USB headphones for audio.