I can’t even follow your arguments anymore.

As a user, I want as many options as possible, but if I can get a phone that’s $100 cheaper because it doesn’t have a headphone port, I’ll definitely choose that option.

You’re the one that implied headphone jacks add cost to phones. I’m saying that they don’t, and whatever cost they do add is minuscule. The implication that any cost savings is being passed to you is laughable.

Look, they killed the jack because they could save a couple bucks of design time and get a few cubic millimeters of space, but most importantly they could softly force their users to buy wireless headphones (maybe even the ones they sell and bundle?!). The former outcomes being happy accidents in order push the latter. It’s win win for them, and lose for the customer.

They know that their price concious customers are still using wired headphone and unlikely to take them up on their bundle, so they keep including it there. The affluent ones are the ones with cash to burn and little care for this issue. I get you like BT headphones, so do I, but there’s simply no good defense for the 3.5mm removal other than shilling.

And yet headphone ports are on all the cheap phones and lacking from the high end phones. Your argument just doesn’t hold water.

You’re missing the point again. It’s not one or the other. We used to have BOTH. I use BT headphones day to day because I like the convenience, like you. However there plenty of times I wished I had an aux out or forgot my BT buds and wanted to use a pair of headphones I had at the desk.

We deserve BOTH.

Yeah, that’s a good analogy.

I’d love for that to be the case, but without a lot more polish and the ability to run Android apps in some kind of sandbox I don’t see it happening.

No, and if it does it would be an unnoticeable amount. I’ve run custom launchers since the Nexus days. If I ever load the stock launcher it’s slow to start so that indicates it hasn’t been sitting in RAM.

There’s so many extra things you can do with custom launchers that I would have a hard time going back. One thing I like about Nova that I haven’t seen anywhere else, is folders within icons. So I can make a folder called “Messengers” and put all my different messaging apps in it. I then put Signal as the first in the folder (because I use it most) and in the folder setting select “launch first app” as the tap action and “open folder” as swipe up action. The folder then just becomes a Signal icon and works like a regular Signal icon, but if I swipe up on it, all my different messaging apps come up. Its great and I have these hidden folders for everything. My camera app is actually my gallery, picture editors, etc. My Phone app is also my contacts, meeting app, you get the picture. Keeps my home screen nice and tidy but I still have everything categorized and easy to reach.

That’s a feature of the launcher. I use Nova Launcher, but there are plenty of others to choose from that don’t do that. The launcher is essentially the “home screen or desktop” of your phone, including the app drawer. It can be swapped out depending on taste. So with that changed the only thing that remains “Samsungy” is the notification shade and the main settings menu.

I have a Samsung S23 and literally none of the issues you describe. I swapped the launcher out but other than that it’s stock. I don’t use any of the Samsung services so yes, there is some bloat there, but it takes up minimal storage so it’s not a big deal.

I have sideloading, don’t have any subscriptions, have amazing Work/Private sandboxing, and I have DeX which is so damn good. I came from Pixels and I honestly thing a lot of the tweaks Samsung makes to Android are real fixes to things Google ignores. It’s not perfect, of course, but I’m not seeing much better from Apple or Google right now.