This, friends, is the Samsung Galaxy Dongle. The NSFW photo arrives courtesy of SamMobile. The story isn’t the image itself, so much as what it represents. It’s the end of an era. A last key flagship smartphone maker acknowledging the death of the 3.5mm jack.
It’s been years in the making, of course. Apple took some fire for dropping the technology, though most others followed suit. Some clung to it, both stubbornly and as a badge of honor — a differentiator, even, in an era when those have become few and far between on high-end flagships.
When Samsung’s Note 10 arrives next week, it’s expected to leave the headphone jack behind. All it will have to show for it is the above USB-C adaptor, arriving alongside it, in box. Oh, and a pair of AKG-branded USB-earbuds. Samsung doesn’t get enough credit for the quality of its in-box earbuds, by the way, so shout out to those.
Anyway, the Samsung Galaxy Dongle is here, so you might as well get used to it. Likely the company’s mid-tier handsets will continue to support the headphone jack for a while still. Eventually, however, it will likely be phased out there, as well, especially with Bluetooth earbuds continuing to drop dramatically in price.
For now, it’s the dongle’s world. We’re all just living in it.