Esiste dal diciannovesimo secolo e da allora è cambiato pochissimo, come racconta la BBC in un articolo. Aggiungendo che se Apple decidesse di farne a meno nel prossimo iPhone in realtà ricalcherebbe solamente le orma della maggioranza dei telefoni prima dell’iPhone — che avevano entrate audio proprietarie:

Having a standardised headphone jack on mobile phones and MP3 players is only a relatively recent luxury.

“If you look at the previous generation of phones, things like Nokia phones, you had to have an adapter,” he reasons. “If you want to connect headphones to professional equipment, you also need a professional adapter.”

As recently as 2010, Samsung phones came equipped with a proprietary headphone port not dissimilar to Apple’s rumoured replacement for the 3.5mm socket, the “Lightning” port.