LeEco Le 2, Le Max 2: Are you ready for mobiles without 3.5mm earphone ports?

NEW DELHI: Chinese smartphone manufacturer LeEco (formerly known as LeTV), amidst much fanfare, today launched its Le 2 and Le Max 2 smartphones in India. Both devices offer a lot for the price. The Le Max 2 is the first phone in the country to come with 6GB RAM. In terms of raw hardware, both Le 2 and Le Max 2 are impressive.

However, LeEco has dropped an essential feature from its new smartphones that is usually taken for granted — a 3.5mm audio port.

Read: 5 reasons why mobiles without 3.5mm headphone port is a bad idea

The Le 2 and Le Max 2 are the first smartphones to come without a standard 3.5mm earphone jack. Both smartphones feature USB Type-C audio output only. This means that the charging and data transfer port also works as the headphone port.

The headphones feature CDLA or Continual Digital Lossless Audio standard, which supposedly delivers clearer audio as compared to Hi-Fi audio standards.

LeEco says until now, the audio decoder was built inside the smartphones. However, it has managed to put the audio decoder inside the headphone cable itself.

The company already has launched its USB Type-C headphones and earphones, price in the range of Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000.

With this, users will either need Bluetooth headphones or have to buy USB Type-C headphones. The company is yet to confirm whether or not, it will bundle its USB Type-C earphones with both Le 2 and Le Max 2 smartphones. However, it might offer an adapter for free.


Apple’s upcoming iPhone 7 is also rumoured to ditch the traditional 3.5mm headphone socket. Chip giant Intel too has extended its support to USB Type-C as the one-stop port. It seems LeEco is in a hurry to win the “creator of world’s first smartphones with USB Type-C audio output” title, after being the first to introduce USB Type-C in smartphones.

Read also: 10 budget smartphones with 3GB RAM

The Le 2 is priced at Rs 11,999, while the Le Max 2 costs Rs 22,999 (including one year of content). The registration for the handsets will start on June 20, and both will be available on the company’s online portal Lemall.com and Flipkart.

While smartphone makers might be betting big on USB Type-C audio and portraying it as the next big thing in smart headphone technology, the big question is, are consumers ready for this change?