Up until now, every one of Apple’s iPhone hardware updates has been additive. New iPhones do all the stuff that the old ones could do, plus some new stuff. Moving to bigger screens and swapping the 30-pin connector for the Lightning connector have caused a little pain for developers and users (respectively), but even those more disruptive updates were fundamentally giving you more of something than last year’s offering.

It made iPhone upgrades generally pretty easy to recommend. If your phone was two or three years old and wearing out, there’s a new phone waiting for you that will be better than what you have. Even small-screened phone die-hards eventually got the iPhone SE.

Broadly speaking, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus still give you more: more speed, better camera, better screens, faster LTE, more battery life, more water-resistant. Year-over-year, it’s a respectable update. And compared to an aging iPhone 6 or 5S it’s a big jump forward. There’s just one thing missing. You know what we’re talking about, right?

Apple believes that wireless audio is the future, but instead of waiting for the future to get here, the company is forcing the issue. The iPhone 7 removes the standard 3.5mm audio jack in favor of audio over the Bluetooth protocol and its proprietary Lightning port. Older iPhones can do all three, but the iPhone 7 can’t.

What is it like to use the first smartphone of any real significance not to include a headphone jack? Where does it create problems? When is it beneficial? And are the other things that the iPhone 7 brings to the table enough to justify giving up such a venerable and widespread port?

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Listing image by Andrew Cunningham