The Samsung Galaxy Note 10 series might have just about everything you might want from a smartphone, but it doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone port.
Although just officially confirmed, this probably won’t come as much of a surprise to those who have been following the Galaxy Note 10 news considering the absence of a way to physically connect a 3.5mm pair of wired headphones to your new Galaxy Note phone (without the help of an adapter) had been rumored, speculated, and reported on for quite some time. In fact, it was sort of predicted almost a year ago.
The difference is, now with the actual confirmation has come some additional information that consumers might find useful to know. Such as how Samsung has reportedly confirmed to The Verge that the reason the headphone port was omitted was to make way for a bigger battery.
As part of the Galaxy Note 10 announcement it was confirmed the standard model is fitted out with a 3,500 mAh capacity battery while the Galaxy note 10+ boasts a 4,300 mAh capacity battery. This compares to the Galaxy Note 9 (with a headphone port) and its 4,000 mAh capacity battery. Therefore, the first real follow-up question should have been why the smaller or standard Galaxy Note 10 doesn’t have a port?
That aside, the company rep credited with the reasoning did explain the lack of a port resulted in an increase of battery capacity in the region of 100 mAh. Depending on how much you like to run the how-low-can-I-go gauntlet with your battery on an average day will likely determine whether or not you think that was a worthwhile trade-off in the grand scheme of things.
Apparently, the battery was not the only benefit of dropping the headphone port as the same rep explained that it also improves haptic feedback as well. Although, again, it remains to be seen how much that is likely to have improved as although there’s now less hollow space in the chassis, there’s only less, not none.
Regardless of the reasons, the reality is with Samsung being one of the major remaining bastions of the headphone port, and one who manages to shift quite a few smartphones each year, it seems the tipping point has finally been reached in the smartphone market.
Yes, it is possible that Samsung may opt to include one again with its ‘next big thing’ (too early to start talking about that?), but that would seem less likely now as this is unlikely to have been a decision Samsung took too lightly considering its long-term stance on being a headphone port advocate.
Making this decision with the Galaxy Note 10 series is far more likely to be representative of Samsung making this decision with its smartphones in general. Or at least, with the major flagship ones and that’s another point in itself.
Recently, a number of smartphones have started to get announced with a headphone port — as a selling feature compared to when it was just normal — but it appears to be now something that’s considered more of a mid-range smartphone feature.