It's not a work-around, a headphone requires a DAC and an amp. In fact, my phone has a crap DAC causing artifacts in the sound. It's actually not to my benefit to have the jack because I'd get better sound with the external DAC which is transparent.

So the jack works, but the DAC you get can be whatever the manufacturer considers good enough.

DACs I can hear issues in:

My phone, my tablet, my desktop PC

DACs that are transparent to me:

My laptop, my $12 external DAC