Sony May Be Ditching the Headphone Jack in Its Next Xperia Phablet

By Janna Dela Cruz, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Sony might be ditching the headphone jack for its next-generation offerings.

An unnamed Sony Xperia phablet has popped up on the United States regulatory board Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in which details about its dimensions were uncovered along with illustrations.

The main takeaway is that the device in question is shown to be connected with headphones via a dongle. Xperia Blog points out that the FCC ID label appears to have taken the place of the 3.5mm headphone jack, which is usually found on the top portion in Sony handsets.

The removal of the audio jack could very well be part of Sony's efforts to keep up with the latest trend in mobile design. While not all manufacturers followed suit when Apple did the headphone jack purge first, it looks like a lot more of them will do so this year.

Sony is also letting go of its longstanding OmniBalance design, which features chunky bezels that will look outdated next to other premium offerings from competing brands who started to trim the bezels of their smartphones.

The latest Xperia flagships had very thick bezels, which definitely turned off a lot of users who prefer their handset with minimal bezels and a sleek look.

This Xperia phablet, however, will face no such issues as it will apparently be sporting the new design language by Sony at least based on the same FCC listing, which indicates the overall dimensions as 152.79 x 72.42 mm.

The device will also apparently sport a 5.7-inch screen diagonal. Whether or not the company will adopt the new 18:9 aspect ratio is unknown at the moment.

The illustrations provided show the mystery Sony Xperia phablet has an edge to edge display but still relatively thick forehead and chin.

Android Headlines suggests that this may not be an accurate representation of the design as the sketches were included to simply show the positioning of the buttons and the label.

Sony will unveil new offerings at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) next month. Whether this mystery Xperia phablet will be part of the show remains to be seen.