Yesterday marked the release of Google’s $449 Pixel 5A with 5G, and the company has just released a two-minute video that celebrates one of the phone’s very best hardware features. No, it’s not the new IP67 dust and water resistance. It’s not the larger screen or the biggest battery in a Pixel yet.
It’s all about the headphone jack, or “the circle” as this very Jony Ive-esque spot constantly refers to it. Google is truly getting out there with its YouTube advertising, and you’ve probably never seen a video about a headphone jack quite like this. I mean, the ad uses footage of a space station docking to underline the “satisfying feeling of click” you get when plugging headphones into Google’s latest phone.
My favorite part is when it dives right into the nitty-gritty of headphone jack terminology: Google says the Pixel 5A is “designed to welcome both 1/8th-inch three-pole TRS and four-pole TRRS connections.”
Even the video’s description is on point:
Calling this perfectly-symmetrical, technological marvel, a “headphone jack” may feel like an understatement…but technically, that’s what it’s called, so… fair enough. Behold! The Headphone Jack, on the Google Pixel 5a with 5G.
The narrator declares the Pixel 5A’s headphone jack to be “a glorious achievement that draws from our past as it propels us into the future.”
But something about that line got to me. Because now, my friends, we must come tumbling back to reality, where that “future” only applies to the midrange Pixel. Google’s next flagship smartphones, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, won’t have the circle. However perfect it might be, it’s been absent on the top-tier Pixels since the Pixel 2.