Re: iPhone 7 with no 3.5mm headphone jack?
I'm currently somewhere in the middle, but I'm leaning towards the "I'm not cool with this" side.
The 3.5mm headphone jack has been with us for a long time and has always been a reliable connector to plug your headphones into. That's why nearly every gadget has one, unless you count the Oppo R5, which was ridiculously thin at 4.85mm (and way below my comfortable thickness range) and as such, can't fit a headphone jack. So they had to supply a dongle.
Which brings us the question. If this is true, what is Apple trying to do? I read Rene's article about some guy claiming that removing the 3.5mm headphone jack "will improve audio quality". I'm sorry, but that is absolute bullcrap.
If audio quality needs to be improved, removing the headphone jack is not the way to do it since it does not bring any benefit to audio quality and if it does, the benefits are so tiny, no one would notice. For audio quality to really improve, you need to improve the DAC, add or improve the headphone amplifier and also bring higher-resolution audio files to the masses. That's how you improve audio quality. You can look at devices like the LG V10, which features pretty much all of the above.
My other big concern is that Apple could be ditching it to make their phones thinner. I'm also not okay with this because our phones are already very thin as they already are. My iPad Pro is 6.9mm thin and on a phone, I find that borderline comfortable. Given that one pain point about the 6S is its battery life (and leading Apple to release that battery case, which I still think looks pretty fugly), Apple should consider making the phone slightly thicker and stuff in a larger battery OR keep the same thickness but adapt the MacBook 2015's battery tech for use in the iPhone 7. I don't need a thinner phone. Yeah, it looks great and appealing in a store, but once you own one, that battery life will eventually become quite a pain point.
On the other hand, Apple could ditch the headphone jack to increase space for something like a bigger battery. To me, that is pretty darn unlikely, but if that's the case, then I am partly okay with it, but given that I'm a heavy headphones user, I frankly don't see the appeal, especially since the dongle likely won't be included in the box and has to be purchased separately at a high price for a dongle, which is classic Apple.