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Well, I suppose it was inevitable.
Over the past couple of years, we have seen a major shift in mobile devices that has marked the coming demise of one of the most widely used accessories in your bag.
The 3.5mm headphone jack
While the industry has been torn on whether or not this most common of features should fall by the wayside, most manufacturers have nixed the headphone jack from their flagship phones. Computers, in my opinion, shouldn’t be looking for a reason to remove headphone jacks but it appears that one new Chromebook is doing just that.
The MediaTek-based Chromebook(or Chrome Tablet) Krane has had its code updated to remove the 3.5mm audio input.
krane: ucm: remove 3.5mm audio jack related nodes
Krane does not have an audio jack. Removes all 3.5mm audio jack related nodes.
Chromium Repository
We’re still digging to find more details on the Chromebook ‘Krane’ but it is in early development so it could be a few more months before we see it materialize. The removal of the headphone jack leads me to think it is possibly a tablet and hopefully a thin one.
Even at 10mm of thickness, the Pixelbook still included a headphone jack. I can’t think of any other reason to scrap the feature unless ‘Krane’ could be a kiosk-focused Chromebox. Still, that’s a stretch.
We’ll keep looking into what’s new with ‘Krane’. Who knows? Maybe it’s shaping up to be the Chrome tablet we’ve been waiting for.
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