Technology

1. Money - The cheapest actually usable wireless earbuds are like 50 bucks and they sound just like €5 wired Panasonic earbuds.
2. Compatibility
3. Nothing extra to recharge, no extra batteries to dispose of. Wireless earbuds are a lot more wasteful at the end of their life.
4. Most likely higher audio quality than wireless if using SBC (depends on phone's sound card)
5. Latency - Sure, modern wireless earphones/headphones may have tiny latency, but it can get noticeable when gaming
6. FM Radio - no antenna, no radio
7. Less RFI
8. Power efficiency
9. Microphone input - It's also an input. Wired input. Although it's only mono. I used that to digitize a ZX Spectrum tape I found, tape with unidentified music and recording from SW radio. No need to bring out my laptop for that. You just need a combo jack splitter.
10. No audio cuts - Most earbuds just cut off audio when there's silence to save power, but that may also affect quiet audio. It also affects audio with cuts of silence in between. Each time they kick back, it's ever so slightly late, losing a bit of audio.
11. Safety when watching that stuff - you connected wired earphones, the audio goes just into them. You may take your wireless earphones, you see the Bluetooth icon showing it's connected. Good. You play the stuff, you don't hear anything. You increase the audio level, the living room speaker is moaning. Shit.
12. SSTV - this could be useful for hams. There's Robot36 and SSTV Encoder apps (F-Droid links). Using a phone with the radio may be pretty convenient, again utilizing the combo jack splitter.

Wired headphones? What else?

They're actually fairly rare and not particularly compatible. My 3.5mm earbuds plug in natively to my Switch, my phone, my PS5 controller, my laptop and my desktop PC.

I recentlly upgraded my PC headset and moved the old one to use in my bedroom only to discover that because it's USB I can only use it with my laptop.

So yeah, no, not obsolete and not the same.

Bluetooth means a wireless bud/headphone, which means batteries and extra hardware to support Bluetooth and DAC, and an extra cable and charging adapter, and maybe an extra case. When it could all be driven by a simple headphone jack instead.

Bluetooth still lags. To this day. Don't ask me why or how, given it's the year of our lord 2023, but I can tell there is lag in most bluetooth headsets even in video content, let alone games.

So yeah, I have a Sony Xperia 1 IV, which not only has the headphone jack but forward facing stereo speakers and no notch or camera punch-hole. To my knowledge it's the very last flagship phone with that specific feature set.

It still degrades audio quality and that's an area I refuse to compromise on.

The smartphone is not the expensive part of my mobile audio playback setup, I expect it to be compatible with the standard playback interface of wires.