In Apple’s unrelenting quest to make the iPhone as thin as possible, new rumors suggest the iPhone 7 will be without a 35mm headphone jack.
For as long as people have owned an iPhone, iPod, or any other music-listening device, we’ve known and loved the existence of the standard headphone jack. It’s allowed us to listen to music in the private space of our own ears with whatever headphones we choose!
But soon, we may be saying goodbye to the headphone jack as we know it.
Numerous Apple watchers are reporting that the iPhone maker is planning to drop the headphone jack and instead run people’s headphones through the Lightning connector (that port you use to charge your phone). In other words, headphones and power chargers will use the same port on the bottom of the phone.
Apple is reportedly interested in doing this to free up additional space inside the phone so they can make the device even thinner. The iPhone has been on a steady decline in thickness over the past decade (to the frustration of those who just want a bigger battery).
There are a couple of big problems with dropping the 35mm headphone port: 1) If you own a pair of headphones you really like that use the standard headphone port, you’ll need an adaptor to continue using them with iPhone 7, and 2) Presumably you won’t be able to charge and use your headphones at the same time.
Problem two may be solved if Apple introduces wireless charging, a feature that has already come to some Android phones. Wireless charging lets you rest your phone on a pad to let it charge without plugging your phone into anything. Still, it’s not a solution to the simultaneous charge-while-listening problem unless we all carry around wireless charging pads.
If the rumors are true, the switch will be on par with Apple’s transition from the 30-pin connector to the smaller Lightning cable when they launched the iPhone 5. Expensive adaptors were required in order to continue using the old cables we had all collected over the years, and Apple dropped the ball by making the adapter hard to come by in the first few weeks of the iPhone 5’s release. Hopefully they handle the adapter situation better with the headphones than they did with the charging cables.
Another problem that this switch will cause: If your new iPhone 7 comes with Lightning-equipped headphones, you won’t be able to use them on devices other than your iPhone. For example, you won’t be able to use the headphones on your laptop.
Apple is expected to debut the iPhone 7 in the fall.
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