Ahead of the expected August release date it probably won’t surprise many that we’re seeing more Galaxy Note 10 rumours. We’ve already heard that it’s likley to come in two sizes and today, the latest from Android Police suggests that an earlier rumour of the device having no buttons may well be true, and the headphone jack is also going away.
The removal of these buttons on the surface is cool … maybe. It offers an engineering challenge. Particularly so when you understand that they’re replacing the buttons with touch sensitive capacitive areas on the device – my immediate concern is a “you’re holding it wrong” issue with users turning call volume up or down and potentially turning their phone off inadvertently. HTC certainly had trouble when moving to capacitive buttons on the U12.
As for the headphone jack, Samsung is one of the only device manufacturers to have stuck with the headphone jack on high end devices but it seems that might be at an end. It’s not the first time we’ve heard that the upcoming Note 10 will be sans-jack, but it’s disappointing to see Samsung fall in line. For many of us this is less important, but there are definitely some users who still rely on it and don’t want to carry USB C adapters to use their headphones.
If anything though, we’re seeing a softening of the anti-headphone-jack stance of the last few years, with some manufacturers bringing it back (notably, Google added it on the Pixel 3a).
There is a rationalisation of space when you take anything out of a device. A tradeoff such as this should benefit consumers rather than inconveniencing them. Let’s hope that the lack of buttons and headphone jack removal allows better water/dust protection, or some extra space for the battery?
Headphone jack is a useful feature, especially when you’re on Dex and you need to plug in the surround speaker.