For me the only thing that would make eliminating the headphone jack worth it is if they put a lightning jack on both ends and made the phone perfectly symmetrical. With literally no top or bottom, no right or wrong way to hold it, and finally a way for my phone to sit in the cup holder with a charge cable coming out the top and maps showing in the right orientation!
The trick in making all this work of course is what you do with the rest of the buttons. If Apple could come up with something truly better than what we have had all along for lock, volume, silent, and home, that would be really neat.
In other words, I can see justifying removal of the jack as part of a holistic redesign which really evolves how we interface with the device. Removing it to make the phone just a bit thinner would be disappointing.
I agree that two ports would make me a lot less annoyed by the change, especially when you can keep an adapter around for one of the ports.
But from experience, designs where the charging and audio ports are on opposing ends are pretty annoying in practice, because the two cords restrict how you can move the phone when it is charging and headphones are in use. Apple stopped doing it that way several years ago.
Your only other choice is a single port on one side. There's no way you get two ports side-by-side on one side. So your point is well taken, but the existing setup of charge and audio together on the same side would be gone no matter what.
I think the choice is eliminate the port and don't allow simple charging while listening without a weird adapter, or else you need two lightning ports.
What will be funny is the power cords which have a 3.5mm jack embedded in them. Take the jack off the phone, move it a couple inches away. It can be made very streamlined, doesn't have to be bulky. The possibility of a good power/jack cable makes me think they won't actually pull off a radical redesign, but I'd be so glad to be proven wrong, just to see something different from Apple.
The trick in making all this work of course is what you do with the rest of the buttons. If Apple could come up with something truly better than what we have had all along for lock, volume, silent, and home, that would be really neat.
In other words, I can see justifying removal of the jack as part of a holistic redesign which really evolves how we interface with the device. Removing it to make the phone just a bit thinner would be disappointing.