Apple May Replace 3.5mm Headphone Jack on iPhone 7 With All-in-One Lightning Connector

[LIVEFRMNYC]

3.5 mm headphone jacks are trash, its the component that fails every time on a portable device, giving you static unless you spin the headphone cord within the jack to the right point. a lightning port headphone jack will likely eliminate that completely.

I never had a problem with 3.5 mm headphone jacks. It's the 3.5mm headphones cords that seem to always breakdown, especially on cheap headphones.

But the lighting cord will have the same issue. Lighting cords from Apple eventually go bad when moving it around too much to the point I can't charge my iPad anymore. If I get a cheap non-Apple lighting cord from a store, it works for a couple weeks, then eventually slow charging and the popups of not compatible are the problem.

I don't think a lighting port will solve anything issues people already might experience with 3.5mm jacks.

 

[Skoal]

Lol people complaining about "the magic is gone" over losing an outdated headphone jack?

You guys must've wanted slit your wrists when dial up when bye bye!

 

[Toltepeceno]

Lol people complaining about "the magic is gone" over losing an outdated headphone jack?

You guys must've wanted slit your wrists when dial up when bye bye!

Do you wait until apple tells you to go poo poo? I guess you would slit your wrists if apple wasn't around to tell you what you need.

 

[TheIntruder]

Everyone complained about the lightning connector, now people have moved on, upgraded their old crappy stuff, and life is good.

Replacing one proprietary connector with another is not the same situation as this one.

If true, and the objective is to shave another 1mm of thickness, will the majority of users who use phone cases even notice? People would be hard pressed to notice even without a case.

The iPhone 6 is already harder to hold than the previous ones. Diminishing returns...

Is it for "high fidelity?" Again, who but the minority will even notice? The typical user feeding at the subscription streaming music trough who prizes variety and convenience, not fidelity, most? While listening through a pair of cheap earphones, or a crappy Bluetooth wireless speaker?

Apple's recent focus has clearly been on the mass market (albeit to great success), and none of these people will care about this kind of stuff.

 

[tdar]

Most modern cars have bluetooth, no?

Yes and carplay that you connect to by plugging into the lightning port...Oh wait...

 

[navaira]

Paper industry, please make fat paper! It makes it awkward to hold.

Let me introduce you to modern invention called "a book". It's like a Macbook, but made of paper and single charge lasts forever. Most models are also significantly thicker than an iPhone.

On a more serious note, the only cases where the headphone jack died on me are Sony products. Much as I love my Z3 Compact the headphone jack will require fixing soon. The same happened in my walkmans and discmans. No idea why Sony can't get this right after all these years. I never managed to break the headphone jack in any other product, including three iPhones.

 

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Well, they'd either need to include yet another DAC in the included headphones (which seems like an unnecessary expense) or they'd need to modify the lightning port so that it outputs an analogue signal (which seems unlikely). I hope this means that this is just a ridiculous rumor. I'm all-in on Apple, but as a serious headphone collector, I'd have a really hard time sticking with them if they were to remove the standard headphone jack.

Hmm. I forgot about the huge lightning to 30 pin adapter. It does include a DAC doesn't it. So I agree with you. I see it as a loss with no gain.

 

[MacHiavelli]

Love the people saying they'll jump to Android/Samsung if Apple drops the 3.5mm jack.

What, Android/Samsung won't copy Apple (again)?

So much hurt over a crappy little bit of meaningless metal. Good grief.

Doh!

 

[Mattsasa]

what about usb-c

 

[QquegChristian]

It is analog signal connector from 19th century. Analog signal, well, has an analog quality, just think of usual S D television.

With lightning, you can have digital signal and better quality, or HD. There is higher density signal or Hi-Res signal which has higher sampling rate than CDs, 24bit/96kHz or even 192kHz.
The standard for Hi-Res is
"Lossless audio that is capable of reproducing the full range of sound from recordings that have been mastered from better than CD-quality music sources."
Read more at http://www.stuff.tv/features/why-yo...it-sceptical-hi-res-audio#IXvRUbVqzux6CIuP.99

Therefore, move to Lightning for headphones means Apple moves to Hi-Res audio.

I'm still waiting for those digital speakers and headphones that spit 0s and 1s into your ears.

If you are hearing it, it has been converted to analog. The question is whether you want your $800 phone to make the conversion or your $50 headphones.

 

[mistafro]

Yes please! Good bye 3.5mm, you had an amazing run! Bring on the future!

All these people whining about their headphones not working anymore must still have SCSI hard drives and serial printers.

 

[Thunderhawks]

If you'd take the time to listen to yourself speak (or type), you'd understand why people have a problem with it—if you're going to pay $800 for a phone, you shouldn't have to spend an extra $20+ to get something as basic as headphones to work with the phone.

And knowing how Apple has operated in the past, they won't give you the adapter for free. Instead, they'll sell it separately and charge an outrageous amount of money for it, all in the sake of MOAR PROFITZ!!!

And for those who say "Apple knows what people want...", that's a bunch of bull crap. Apple only does what is in their best interests, and spins it to make people think that's what they need. What people want is to listen to music, and not have to pay extra to do it.

Apple drives technology, most of the time they are correct, except the I don't want change crowd has issues to adapt.
Floppy drive, not supporting Flash, no cd drive, no blue ray player, iPad with nothing to hook up to it etc.

Clearly the trend is to go wireless and everything into the cloud. (They just suck at that )
Anybody who has ever gotten tangled in wires in the car or bed etc. knows that wireless beats wires.
Or, we have to untangle wires in our house when we move.

Problem is that the conversion is full of painful trial and error moments until it's perfect.

The classic evolution will be:

no way will I use headphones without wires
then they try it
not do bad
wish that had always been this way,
what took Apple so long and
was I thinking!

Anyway, as I posted before, we'll see.

 

[navaira]

All these people whining about their headphones not working anymore must still have SCSI hard drives and serial printers.

Or headphones.

 

[mazz0]

Wouldn't it make more sense bundle Bluetooth headphones, and replace lightning with USB C?

 

[Traverse]

3.5 mm technology is antiquated.
However, Apple solution is not entirely wireless - it offers Lightning.
I would say yes, 3.5 mm is becoming a bottleneck for thinness.

A bottleneck for thinness is durability and battery life, not a 3.5mm headphone jack.

 

[aressaress]

This sounds like a royal pain in the butt to me. I have absolutely no interest in a phone thinner than my current iPhone 6. I would consider a thinner phone a minus, not a plus.

And then to have to use an adaptor to listen with the great great majority of headphones? That's simply irritating user unfriendly backward progress.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Yeah you gonna bring your wireless charging pad with you in the car?

no, you use bluetooth for audio and you charge via lightning port. if you're walking, use lightning audio

No, it doesn't. What does wireless audio have to do with wireless charging? Wouldn't Apple get rid of the lightning connector first?

who said anything about wireless audio?

 

[farewelwilliams]

delete....

 

[b0nd18t]

Weird considering they are now also a headphone company. Forget the larger battery though, I'd rather have waterproof.

 

[anshuvorty]

I have had it with Apple becoming a "cable-obsessed" company! If this rumor proves true and the next gen iPhone requires a freakin dongle to connect to almost anything audio-related to play some tunes, I am going to move to Android. The 3.5mm jack is so universal, so ubiquitous, why move away from it? If it is just to meet the trend of making each iterative iPhone version thinner and thinner, this, in my opinion is going one step too far. We have already got thin iPhones, thinner iPhones don't/won't make any difference. We have gone past the threshold of usefulness of thinness in iPhones IMHO.

 

[Vanilla35]

no, you use bluetooth for audio and you charge via lightning port. if you're walking, use lightning audio

Your first comment said "actually, this would make sense if iPhone is moving towards wireless charging"

Your second comment says "you use bluetooth for audio and you charge via lightning port."

You seem to have deviated from your initial opinion, or got confused. Wireless charging requires a pad, lightning requires the cable. If you have the pad (wireless charging), you can use the lightning port for audio. If you have bluetooth headphones, then you can use the lightning cable to charge. Both of those are true. If you don't bring your wireless charging pad with you though (I don't know anyone who ever does that), and you don't want poor bluetooth quality music quality (I listen to 320kbps, because lower quality songs are noticeable to me; therefore I prefer direct 3.5mm jack for my music), then you have to make a decision between charging, and playing music. Also, not everyone has bluetooth headphones, or wants to use that.

 

[0007776]

They are already too thin. I don't care about the headphone jack as long as I can still get cheap headphones that work with whatever connector they use. If love to see the iPhone get thick enough that I can go back to not using a case. Sadly I don't see that happening.

 

[Vanilla35]

If love to see the iPhone get thick enough that I can go back to not using a case. Sadly I don't see that happening.

Not happening, lol

 

[GoSh4rks]

It is analog signal connector from 19th century. Analog signal, well, has an analog quality, just think of usual S D television.

With lightning, you can have digital signal and better quality, or HD. There is higher density signal or Hi-Res signal which has higher sampling rate than CDs, 24bit/96kHz or even 192kHz.
The standard for Hi-Res is
"Lossless audio that is capable of reproducing the full range of sound from recordings that have been mastered from better than CD-quality music sources."
Read more at http://www.stuff.tv/features/why-yo...it-sceptical-hi-res-audio#IXvRUbVqzux6CIuP.99

Therefore, move to Lightning for headphones means Apple moves to Hi-Res audio.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Sound is analog. Your ears are analog.

 

[Rigby]

Clearly the trend is to go wireless and everything into the cloud. (They just suck at that )
Anybody who has ever gotten tangled in wires in the car or bed etc. knows that wireless beats wires.

Unless wireless runs out of battery. Most Bluetooth earphones only last a few hours, not enough for an intercontinental flight or a long road trip. I guess we're going to replace tangled earphone wires with tangled power cables.