Among the lower price phone brands, the most popular and successful one—OnePlus—debuted its 6T model in October, earlier than the time expected in November. Surprisingly yet not surprisingly, there is no headphone jack port to see in OnePlus 6T. The same as other high-end brands like Apple and Huawei, but different to its predecessor OnePlus 6, it has a single USB-C port instead.

Why say goodbye to the headphone jack?

Just as the “notch trend” these years, removing the headphone jack from smartphone has been popular too. So it’s quite understandable if OnePlus removes the small jack for a feature that most people like. However, it seems this is not the story of OnePlus.

According to an interview to the CEO of OnePlus from CNET, the cut of headphone jack from OnePlus 6T was actually a tough decision to make. Perhaps when this feature was gone on the iPhone 7, the OnePlus had started to think of getting rid of it. The apparent evidence for this is that Carl Pei—a cofounder of OnePlus—has tweeted informal polls to ask opinions from users for their preference for headphone jack. However, the results are not as the trend goes.

Most people like the primary headphone jack, but why it is still gone on OnePlus 6T? OnePlus’ CEO Lau said they removed the jack for more room and he believes that it is a worthy compromise for an in-screen unlock sensor.

What you will get with in-screen fingerprint sensor and without the headphone jack?

After the hard decision being made, you will see no fingerprint sensor on the back, but an in-screen fingerprint sensor which is not a feature you could see on many of the big names like Apple and Samsung yet. “After you experience the Unlock Sensor you will fall in love with it” said Lau on the interview from CNET. As an invisible sensor in the screen, the FOD (Fingerprint-On-Display) streamlines the outer design of OnePlus 6T and also makes the action of unlock simpler. Here is an introduction from OnePlus official website.

Without the traditional 3.5mm headphone jack, what is the solution to audio listening from OnePlus? With this question in mind, I found the 6T box list in its official website, and got the answer that there is a free headphone jack to USB-C port adapter for users just like what Apple did when iPhone 7 came out. Also, if you think an adapter complexes the process of listening to music, you have another two options there, one is spend extra $19.95 for its Type-C Bullets earphones, and the other is wireless earphones which will cost more, at around $70.

As results of removing the headphone jack, there are an increased cost of OnePlus 6T and a 0.45mm thicker body. Now you can buy OnePlus 6T online with a price starting at $549. Although it is 20 dollars pricier than the OnePlus 6, it is still worth of value thanks to its newest Oxygen OS, powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 CPU, large 3700mAh battery and up to 8GB RAM with up to 258GB storage. While, compare to smartphones without headphone jack which set their price top at more than $1000, OnePlus 6T is definitely a nice and reliable choice.

Will the headphone jack come back?

For most OnePlus fans, the removal of headphone jack is not a liked feature. As a customer-directed company, is it possible that OnePlus will bring the headphone jack back? Well, from my perspective, there is little possibility that this feature will be back since it was gone. If the sacrifice for Unlock Sensor is really worthy, I think people will get used to the feature and embrace the new way of listening to say music. What’s importantly, to make smartphone simpler in design is a trend, so it is wiser to make the cut.