Helen of Troy brought about the Trojan War, but today's tech wars are often about much more mundane topics: like the headphone jack.

The useful little audio jack has been around for centuries and did not offend anyone until Apple decided it took too much space in its phones and killed it in the iPhone 7. Google - shortly after - unveiled a new phone, proudly proclaiming one of its advantage is just having that headphone jack. A year later, and Google has changed its mind: the Pixel 2/XL ships with no headphone jack.

You do get a dongle free in the box, but if you were to lose that (easy!), you would have to buy a new one and Google had a special price for that tiny little dongle: $20! Even Apple, known for its rather pricey gadgets, sells a headphone adapter (3.5mm to Lightning) for just $9 on the Apple Store.

Google's price for a simple 3.5mm to USB-C headphone adapter was outrageous, but thankfully the company was brought back to its senses by everyone's reaction and it has slashed the price to match Apple's. So now you can have that 3.5mm to USB-C adapter for $9. As it should have been from the very start. What probably should not have happened is Google killing the headphone jack in the first place.

USB-C to 3.5mm headphone adapter at the Google Store

Meanwhile, we have reached out to Google for a comment on the reason it removed the headphone jack in the new Pixel 2/XL and will update you with the reason as soon as we have it.

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