They just didn’t have a great reason to take it out of the phones. They took that away from us, as well as expandable memory/microSD card, and still made us pay premium prices (of course).

In favor of aux removal, they claim 2 things: it was another port/entry to waterproof/seal, and it “took up too much space in the phone”. Both arguments are bullshit. Yeah, it’s another entry to seal. But it’s been done…a lot…and even in the few cases of catastrophic failure, the device still works just the aux won’t. FINE. Let the port fail, don’t just take that value away from us as consumers. That’s dumb, that’s not the manufacturer’s choice to make for us. Then taking up space in the phone, again, total bullshit. It’s been implemented millions & millions & millions of times, it’s rather small, so easy to incorporate into design. If the phone is truly that damn small like the iPhone Air is supposed to be, that’s just stupid & a design flaw. Chunk it up a bit!! Give us battery…and give us aux.

I think a big reason for getting rid of aux was to sell us very pricey Bluetooth earbuds, headphones. Which is why, to date, I have never purchased BT buds from a phone manufacturer. They were kind of shit to begin with, just as shit as their intentions, so I’m not giving them my money. I buy Jabra Actives. I might switch to Apple AirPods eventually, as they are getting pretty good, but goddamn I want to be able to buy & use aux/corded, too.

Then microSD they say it “could be unstable”, or “it’s slow(er) to read/write”. Again…okay? Who gives a fuck? Let it fail on me, let it be slow. I don’t mind. Over 20 years, I’ve experienced 1 freak glitch & recently 1 stupid Motorola phone that was nothing but problems. So basically 1 glitch & don’t buy Motorola, problems solved.

Again I’m convinced it all comes down to milking specifically American consumers for money money money money. Why offer them the option for 2TB expandable microSD storage they buy from someone else for $180, when you can upsell them a mere 128 or 256GB more for $300+? Offer less, charge more? That’s an easy decision if you’re a greedy, pig-headed, soulless fuck that doesn’t have to look the consumers in the eye and say, “Yes, I’m choosing to not implement a $5 feature so I can charge you exponentially more money for less product.”

…long-short…I think this obsession comes from experience. We know how easy it is to offer products with these things. They did it for decades. It’s reliable and good technology. They took it away from us for no good reason, probably to shake us down for even more money. And we’re pissed.