I am not looking for fidelity -- just convenience of not having to charge a wireless earbud, or needing a dongle for normal headphones.
The whole reason this is forced on us is to upsell what you say: a wireless earbud. There is no technical reason to have taken out the 3.5mm jack as evidenced by this flagship phone having plenty of room for it.
Let's remember that my current phone has this. And its performance is quite good despite its age. For just a bit more performance, I don't want to give up this jack.
Almost tempted to get a Samsung S10 which was the last generation with headphone jack. Alas, it has no 5G support.
And security fixes will no longer be coming post this quarter.