OnePlus 5T to retain 3.5mm headphone jack

Putting speculation about the 3.5mm headphone jack in the upcoming OnePlus 5T to rest, Pete Lau, the company's Founder and CEO, on Thursday announced the smartphone will retain the standard headphone jack.

Lau, in his latest forum post on the OnePlus online community, cited "audio quality" and "user freedom" as the key factors for this decision.

"When we surveyed the OnePlus community, 70 per cent of users told us that their priority was sound quality. On the whole, wireless earbuds aren't there yet to provide the same quality of audio," he said.

"Nearly 80 per cent of our users use in-jack headphones. At one point, we thought about using another USB-C port to replace the 3.5 mm audio port. This design decision was not worth taking away our users' freedom to use their favourite earphones and accessories," he added.

The Chinese smartphone maker had on Wednesday tweeted a teaser image indicating the presence of a 3.5mm jack on OnePlus 5T.

The OnePlus 5T has been advertised as launching this month. It follows OnePlus 5 which was released in June this year.

The company appears to use the alphabet "T" to distinguish the new upgrades to its existing flagships as it had unveiled OnePlus 3T as the new version of OnePlus 3 last year.

The upcoming smartphone is expected to be the company's first to sport an edge-to-edge display with an aspect ratio of 18:9.

OnePlus 5T is expected to pack in a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset with 8GB RAM and a 20MP front and rear camera, according to an earlier report by GizChina.

--IANS

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