Don’t get me wrong. Apple removing audio jack was the biggest facepalm in smartphone history. And you can thank it for not being able to make an upgrade without sacrificing audio jack (and SD card too :/). But USB-C is getting standardized everywhere now (laptops, smartphones, etc.). What makes USB-C earphones not worth the switch?
Now tell me how many of them actually are. This is just OEMs trying to save literal pennies across 100s of devices by externalizing the cost of a cheap DAC to their customers.
As people have mentioned, it’s not about saving $, it’s about saving space inside the device which is highly valuable
Lots of dongles are quite high quality. Apples even sounds good, and Moondrop makes a higher-end audiophile one that’s better than basically any built-in jack. There’s a pretty big market for good USB C dongles (less so for Lightning).
if you care a lot about audio quality, you might know that the companies always tried to save $$ but using pretty mediocre DAC’s internally