OnePlus today introduced its new flagship device, the OnePlus 5. During the event where the new phone was announced, OnePlus threw some shade at Apple, mocking the removal of the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus.
"On the bottom, you'll notice that we ditched the 3.5mm headphone jack. The elegance of the overall design is instantly heightened. And who needs a headphone jack anyway? That's why Bluetooth exists, right?" deadpanned Diego Heinz, a designer at OnePlus. "Just kidding. Of course the OnePlus 5 has a headphone jack."
Heinz goes on to pull up a tweet on the subject of headphone jacks, displaying a poll where 88 percent of 8,000 responders said they "like headphone jacks."
Ahead of the launch of the OnePlus 5, there was a lot of discussion on whether OnePlus would follow in Apple's footsteps and remove the headphone jack from the device. There were early design leaks and cases that featured no headphone jack, sparking speculation and leading to the on-stage joke.
This isn't the first time an Apple competitor has mocked the company's design decisions. When Samsung introduced the now-defunct Galaxy Note 7 in August of 2016, Samsung marketing VP Justin Denison made sure to point out the device's headphone jack. "Want to know what else it comes with?" he asked. "An audio jack. I'm just saying."
Unlike many of Apple's design choices, the decision to eliminate the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus has not caught on with other smartphone manufacturers, likely due to the negative reaction from consumers. Though Apple has introduced wire-free AirPods and included Lightning-based EarPods along with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, many iPhone customers continue mourn the loss of the headphone jack.
Though the OnePlus 5 still has a headphone jack, the company has adopted many other design elements from Apple, with curved edges, rounded rear antenna bands, a dual camera complete with Portrait Mode, and a "Slate Gray" or "Midnight Black" casing. In fact, The Verge called it "a slightly smaller iPhone 7 Plus that runs Android."
The OnePlus 5, which is priced starting at $479 for 64GB of storage, features a 5.5-inch AMOLED display, a high-end Snapdragon 835 processor, up to 8GB RAM, fast charging, haptic feedback, a 16-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 20-megapixel telephoto camera, and a 16-megapixel front-facing camera.
