The World Of Dongles
The Sector Thriving on the Incompletion of Tech Giants
You’ve bought the Galaxy Note 10 Plus — Samsung’s latest flagship. An amazing device with top-end specs, the best OLED display, premium build quality, smooth OS, long-lasting battery, impressive cameras, and the beloved stylus support. But you realize you cannot plug in your favorite headphones because there is no headphone jack. Unless you pay extra to buy a dongle.
Dongles were initially synonymous with security key devices that plugged into a computer port and granted access to particular software. Later on, the term gained wider usage, encompassing everything from pen-drives, Bluetooth adapters, streaming devices to, more recently, conversion adapters. The last one is now a thriving sector, thanks mainly to Apple.
When Apple released the iPhone 7 in 2016, it defied tradition and omitted the headphone jack. Apple justified this new inconvenience inflicted upon its customers arguing it frees up space for other components and it…
