Only 2000 people are moving from HTC to Google, according to the article. HTC will then leave the phone market. I expect Google to continue following Apple's lead and remove more features. They also have to try to stop their IP from leaking out, and go through some culture shock working in Taiwan.

This is an opportunity for investors to hire the other HTC staff who refuse to join Google for ideological reasons (open designs, repairability) or who just didn't get hired. There's probably a few other people from iFixit, WebOS, Fairphone hanging around here.

YC Summer 2018 is open. I'm in Taiwan. Who wants to make a business plan?

Google has had a large data centre in Taiwan for ages. I suspect it's going to be more of a case of HTC staff having culture shock when joining Google.

Those don't exist in the iPhone either, so I'm not sure what you're arguing for. There's a reason most flagships don't have those anymore.

I haven't heard a single good reason beyond the manufacturers' ambitions.

How about this: most users do not care. The only thing I used from what you mention was headphone jack, but with iPhone 7 I got Beats X and all I can say: good riddance. I will argue that for most iPhone users whatever earbuds they find in the box are good enough. SD cards? Why would I want that…

You forgot about Samsung Galaxy devices, which have all of that and are the most successful mobile phones right next to iPhone.

Galaxy S and Note flagship lines actually had dropped removable storage several generations ago and recently brought it back.

+1 those few reasons mostly being water resistance (headphone jack) and compactness (everything)

I have no idea what I'm going to do once my OG Pixel stops being supported. The lack of headphone jack is a serious concern to me. It truly blows my mind that so many people are capable of accepting this!

I can accept the lack of removable storage and battery. But the headphone jack? That's just the end of the line for me.

You've probably heard this from other people, but I recently switched from a Pixel to a Pixel 2 and was worried about losing the headphone jack as well.

Surprisingly, it hasn't bothered me at all. The battery life is long enough (and fast chase is fast enough) that I never need to charge my phone and listen to it at the same time, and I haven't noticed any difference in sound quality using Google's provided dongle.