Ambitious Chinese technology company LeEco unveiled its latest “superphones”, the headline feature being the adoption of USB Type-C audio to deliver higher-quality than a traditional headphone socket.

It has previously been suggested that rival Apple would drop the headphone jack, in order to deliver audio via its Lightening connector or Bluetooth. While this would enable for a refreshed design with one single-use, and decidedly old-school, connector removed, it would also impact headphone manufacturers and users (while creating a market for adaptors).

LeEco announced three smartphones.

The CNY1,099 ($170) Le 2 is said to be the world’s first smartphone powered by MediaTek’s Helio X20 decacore processor. It has a “bezel-less” design, 8MP front and 16MP rear cameras, 5.5-inch HD screen and fast charging support.

Le 2Pro is priced at CNY1,499, and is powered by a faster MediaTek X25 decacore processor, with 4GB of RAM. It also has a 5.5-inch HD screen and 8MP front camera, although the rear camera sees an upgrade to 21MP.

At the top end is Le Max2 (CNY2,099 for the base version), which is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip. It has a 5.7-inch 2K display “optimised for VR”, and the cameras are the same as Le 2Pro, except with the addition of optical image stabilisation for the rear unit.

A higher-tier version with 6GB of RAM alongside 64GB of storage is also listed.

The company made the announcements in a “cross category product launch” event, which also included an autonomous electric vehicle concept and VR headset.