iPhone 7 Modded to Include Fully Functional 3.5mm Headphone Jack

[Burger Thing]

How are they shot down? Tell me how they could have fit everything they did into the case they were using while making it waterproof.

Maybe they should have reversed engineered a Sony Xperia

Because with the one I had, USB port, dedicated camera button and *gasp*, an (exposed) headphone jack, I snapped pics of my daughter under the water when she learned swimming.

Look, this has been mentioned a million times already in various threads - this is getting a bit long in the tooth.

 

[HVDynamo]

Define huge? From my understanding they only saw a 1% drop in sales over the year, unless I misunderstood their earnings report. This is similar to previous churn so I am not sure the headphone jack is that impactful.

Also, My finding humor in the effort should only be taken as an opinionated chuckle. The tech guy in me appreciates the effort / engineering to make it happen, but I still find it humorous that one would invest so much time and money into something so trivial (again my opinion).

As an aside, Being a classic guy, I still miss the 30 pin Dock connector with dedicated audio pins. But, it was time to move on back then, and that is a different debate. .

Maybe their sales weren't that bad, but it was because they basically offered the 7 for free if you traded in your 6 or 6S or something like that for quite a while after launch. I have a friend who worked in an AT&T store, and they weren't selling that many until the the deal. If I didn't care about the headphone jack I would have traded up in a heartbeat. It was a stellar deal for anyone who didn't care. But unfortunately, I like my industry standard port that works with all the headphones I have already... so F apple for removing it. I will run my 6S into the ground, so they lost at least one sale this year as I have been on the S cycle since damn near the beginning.

 

[Kangastu]

Cool video - (Unless I missed this in the video) you still can't charge the phone and listen to music at the same time - its one or the other and his mod switches between them - so there seems to be no advantage here? At no point in the video does it show the device charging and listen to music via the headphones, so for me this mod, regardless of how impressive the technical details are is the same as plugging your adapter in - it just means you don't need to remember to bring it with you!

 

[Michael Goff]

Maybe they should have reversed engineered a Sony Xperia

Because with the one I had, USB port, dedicated camera button and *gasp*, an (exposed) headphone jack, I snapped pics of my daughter under the water when she learned swimming.

Look, this has been mentioned a million times already in various threads - this is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Yes, people have repeated the same nonsense. But in the shell they chose, and I doubt they chose the shell just to remove the headphone jack, there was no way. They made the taptic engine bigger and made the phone waterproof. That meant the barometer needed the vent that the man removed.

It has been repeated, ad nauseam, that there was a space issue. This has been said by Apple's engineers, showed off by iFixit, and commented on by multiple people in the indusry.

 

[840quadra]

That's not a good metric to use. There are a variety of factors such as investment in the ecosystem that made buying a jackless iphone an "involuntary" (for lack of a better word) purchase.

A better test would be to offer identical model iPhones with identical pricing with the only difference being the inclusion of a headphone jack. THOSE sales numbers would be interesting.

Regardless, the metric I used exists, yours is simply a theory. Since it is okay to assume, I would suspect that a large portion of the buyers also appreciated an attempt at water resistance, dual speakers, improved cameras,and new colors into their purchasing decision.

Maybe their sales weren't that bad, but it was because they basically offered the 7 for free if you traded in your 6 or 6S or something like that for quite a while after launch. I have a friend who worked in an AT&T store, and they weren't selling that many until the the deal. If I didn't care about the headphone jack I would have traded up in a heartbeat. It was a stellar deal for anyone who didn't care. But unfortunately, I like my industry standard port that works with all the headphones I have already... so F apple for removing it. I will run my 6S into the ground, so they lost at least one sale this year as I have been on the S cycle since damn near the beginning.

I use my Apple in ear headphones, and etymotics daily with the included Lightning adapter. Since I am already using a corded headphone it doesn't bother me.

At the end of the day, I am not exactly thrilled with the loss of the headphone jack, but, I have been using Apple products for far longer than I care to discuss. With that experience, I am quite used to them ripping the bandaid off (so to speak) with ports and connectivity. It's an unfortunate fact of life in this ecosystem. Like many complaining about the headphone jack, I pushed pause on buying Apple products a few times, but, sadly there is always something that pulls me back in .

 

[HVDynamo]

Yeh no, i'm sorry but this is simple corporate strategy. Apple will have planned for this years in advance and will have a department dedicated to implementing this strategy. Spending a few dollars less per phone versus the RnD it would take to simply modify it to accept the jack does not add up; especially when one guy did it (literally, a guy) - as evidenced here.

This is similarly simple corporate finance, if you don't get it then fine, but try to understand that Apple, as a company, are taking a long-term view on this. They are altering the market, using their financial muscle and ability to capitalise on people (like yourself, who buy into the brand) to maximise revenue and secure their position in the long term.

This is pretty obvious and i'm not going to say more on the matter. I just felt the need to comment because i'm actually someone who works in this field and was pretty stunned at how much a lot of you were just buying into it. I guess i really underestimated how loyal their customers are.

It's a little frightening really, whether or not you understand these concepts is irrelevant. If one guy can do this, without the world's largest RnD department behind him, do you honestly not believe Cook could snap his fingers and ten days later there would be a solution?

Anyway, feel free to have the last word. I kind of know this for a fact and was just trying to educate a few people here who have clearly - and i hate to use this expression, as a brit - 'drunk the koolaid'. Go read up on it if you're interested in the subject, i suggest 'Brealey and Myers, Corporate Finance' for a beginner.

oh edit: like i said, i'm a brit. If you doubt my assertion that this is what i do then ask yourself why i'm awake at 3am GMT on a Friday night. I'm a quant, I work in IB, i don't get time off. This thread has just taken me aback a little which is why i felt the need to contribute.

It really astounds me how many people just don't get this...It's so blindingly obvious to me, and it actually pisses me off more that people are dumb enough to just go with it because apple says it's better than the fact that they removed the headphone jack. Sure, for some people it perfectly fits their routines, but that wouldn't have changed had they left the jack. I now understand why companies are such shitboxes now days. They can get away with it because people will literally buy anything that is sold to them so they exploit it and rake in more money. *side rant... and can I ever buy a damn product that doesn't require creating a stupid account online, I swear one day my toaster is going to require I sign in with Facebook before it allows me to make toast.* /rant
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Regardless, the metric I used exists, yours is simply a theory. Since it is okay to assume, I would suspect that a large portion of the buyers also appreciated an attempt at water resistance, dual speakers, improved cameras,and new colors into their purchasing decision.




I use my Apple in ear headphones, and etymotics daily with the included Lightning adapter. Since I am already using a corded headphone it doesn't bother me.

At the end of the day, I am not exactly thrilled with the loss of the headphone jack, but, I have been using Apple products for far longer than I care to discuss. With that experience, I am quite used to them ripping the bandaid off (so to speak) with ports and connectivity. It's an unfortunate fact of life in this ecosystem. Like many complaining about the headphone jack, I pushed pause on buying Apple products a few times, but, sadly there is always something that pulls me back in .

I'll have to see where I end up going. I used to hate apple products, but got pulled in with the iPod back in 2003 and slowly began to buy into their ecosystem because I liked where they were headed with things. But I have always been a multiplatform user. I use a Windows desktop that I built myself for gaming and heavy workloads. Ever since Steve passed, apple has slowly been moving away from the company I had begun to really like and turn into just another tech company. They still make some really good products, but I think I am more saddened just watching a company that used to have vision just start going after the easy money rather than the user experience. Honestly, I think this is the beginning of the end for me and apple.

 

[73CortinaV8]

SMH at people obsessed with the stupid headphone jack.

I'm glad it is gone. It crapped out on two of my iphone 6's. Good riddance.

I'm so sick of the whining about it. Boo hoo. If you don't like it, go buy a refurbished iphone SE, but do ****

 

[MH01]

Do you read your own posts? The person said something about a CD tray, then you retorted aboit "only if CDs were better". :/

You brought up the comparison in quality.

I was just been cheeky that CDs SQ is not superior as superior compared to BT and wired .

Have a nice day. Was just. Sarcastic comment, yours reponce is valid

 

[torana355]

Im shocked there are so many people in this thread that think they are smart using wireless headphones with rubbish sound quality. Some of us actually appreciate quality sound!!

 

[SirRahikkala]

The sound quality has nothing to do with them being wireless or not. It only depends on the quality of the DAC in the electronics. So, if you buy cheap headphones you get ****** sound. But if you buy wireless headphones with better DAC than in the phone, you will get better sound, now at least you have a choice.

iPhones doesn't support AptX which is de-facto best audio quality technology over the Bluetooth. Why? because then Apple would have to license it from Qualcomm. It's still a pig even if you add make-up.

 

[NecroKill]

Still going on over a nonissue

 

[Abazigal]

Im shocked there are so many people in this thread that think they are smart using wireless headphones with rubbish sound quality. Some of us actually appreciate quality sound!!

That is your problem, not mine.

These are the headphones I own. Haven’t touched them since I got my AirPods last December.

There are other factors which matter just as much in a pair of headphones besides sound quality, such as convenience and ease of use.

All I know is that my AirPods are working very well for me and I don’t see myself using any other pair of headphones, wired or otherwise, anytime soon.

 

[Abazigal]

Yes, but knockoffs do not work against control. Apple's official excuses for removing the jack are shot down, anyway. It's not a matter of lack of space, it's not a matter of waterproof. So why did they do it ?

The same reason why Apple blocked flash on iOS, to promote creation of native apps in the App Store and push for developers to adopt html 5 by making the environment so hostile that flash is completely and utterly unable to thrive at all.

You cannot usher in a new world order without first doing away with the current one.

The lesson Apple keeps teaching and others keep ignoring is; to create true meaningful change in a market you need to force change. By taking bold unapologetic stances. Here’s a touchscreen smart phone without the familiarity of a physical Qwerty keyboard. Here’s a large screen tablet without a desktop OS and desktop apps and file system. Here’s a smart phone without a headphone jack.

 

[NecroKill]

Im shocked there are so many people in this thread that think they are smart using wireless headphones with rubbish sound quality. Some of us actually appreciate quality sound!!

Please just stop with the sound quality. Nobody takes you seriously as it is.

 

[44267547]

The same reason why Apple blocked flash on iOS, to promote creation of native apps in the App Store and push for developers to adopt html 5 by making the environment so hostile that flash is completely and utterly unable to thrive at all.

You cannot usher in a new world order without first doing away with the current one.

The lesson Apple keeps teaching and others keep ignoring is; to create true meaningful change in a market you need to force change. By taking bold unapologetic stances. Here’s a touchscreen smart phone without the familiarity of a physical Qwerty keyboard. Here’s a large screen tablet without a desktop OS and desktop apps and file system. Here’s a smart phone without a headphone jack.

Apple has never been the type of company fearing to take initiative and make the changes that other manufacturers won't to better the device and or experience. Now, that's where the gap is in between for some that don't agree with Apple's decisions and or simply just don't care because the Company changes does not align with their own views. It's a world where if it inconveniences the user, then they don't care what other changes that were made to the iPhone that Apple see's to make the device better for the future. Therefore it causes controversy from what you read on here about others disdain and how this company is "Failing." Which translates the user into blind misconception all because of what What doesn't work for them.

 

[Oliveira46]

Not this nonsense still

Non-sense calling a product PRO (if you didn't know "PRO" stands for PROFESSIONAL), and then remove a lot of the tools that actually make laptop professional

As a professional photo and video editor I use lots of memory cards, a mouse and a design pen-touchpad. I need "regular" USB ports and I need the card reader.

What's worse is that I have to plug a lot of customers flash drives, and as you expect, 99,9% of the people still don't have USB-C flash drives.

USB-C is the future, I don't mid the ports, but it's a transition fase, so apple should have included both type of ports, and in 3 or 4 years maybe switch to all USB-C once the standard becomes more popular

 

[Substance90]

That's like me modding my 2017 MacBook with a CD drive.

Not really. More like modding your new mbp with a normal USB3 port. You know, the kind that still gets used every day.

 

[NecroKill]

Not really. More like modding your new mbp with a normal USB3 port. You know, the kind that still gets used every day.

If you don't make that step at some point it would never happen and if Apple didn't do that we would be stuck with LPT cables.

 

[EdT]

The sound quality has nothing to do with them being wireless or not. It only depends on the quality of the DAC in the electronics. So, if you buy cheap headphones you get ****** sound. But if you buy wireless headphones with better DAC than in the phone, you will get better sound, now at least you have a choice.

Bluetooth does not use lossless compression, so the sound will suffer from loss of data. Plus, you've had the ability to use BT for years even with a phono jack available. You did lose the ability to use wireless headphones because Apple decided to add a phono jack, nor was the quality of the BT hampered by the phono jack.

You lose NOTHING by having a phono jack available to use.

 

[^^BIGMac]

Talk about a guy with too much time on his hands.

 

[DjanSeriyAnaplian]

The same reason why Apple blocked flash on iOS, to promote creation of native apps in the App Store and push for developers to adopt html 5 by making the environment so hostile that flash is completely and utterly unable to thrive at all.

You cannot usher in a new world order without first doing away with the current one.

The lesson Apple keeps teaching and others keep ignoring is; to create true meaningful change in a market you need to force change. By taking bold unapologetic stances. Here’s a touchscreen smart phone without the familiarity of a physical Qwerty keyboard. Here’s a large screen tablet without a desktop OS and desktop apps and file system. Here’s a smart phone without a headphone jack.

This is sort of the point but also evidences the other point i was trying to make.

Apple are not trying to 'usher in a new world order', they are a company. As an entity they exist solely to maximise revenue/profit and therefore return for their shareholders. They are not trying to create a 'meaningful change in the market', they are exploiting their position, as the largest company on the planet (the ****ing planet, people), to realise the aforementioned.

Christ on a cracker everybody, this is not a conspiracy theory, it's just what companies do. Apple just happen to do it the best, and this forum is pure evidence of why it works.

I know i wouldn't say anymore on this, but it's just so pants-on-head retarded that some of you don't see the logic of it. Apple spent $8.1 billion dollars on RnD in 2016, that represents 3.5% of their annual revenue.

They're not even trying: that's how strong their brand power is. If they bumped that to 10% of revenue do you have any idea what an entity could accomplish with that kind of money?

This guy did it on his own, hand him $10 billion dollars and see if he can't solve the "space issue".

Ugh, this hurts my head. Educate yourselves.

 

[Reason077]

Cool DIY effort. Personally, I would just get bluetooth headphones, but some people like to get their hands dirty in projects.

Bluetooth headphones kind of suck because

1. you have to charge them, which means carrying around (or losing) an extra cable anyway
2. random disconnections and pairing problems (ok, Apple's solved this with Airpods, but do you really want to be tied in to Apple's products only?)
3. audio slightly out of sync with screen due to latency. not a problem for music, and can be compensated for in movies, but annoying for gaming!

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I'd buy it. I use the headphone jack every day on my iPhone 6 and won't upgrade it until it eventually dies a death and I'm forced to replace it with something else.

Me too. I'm seriously contemplating iPhone 6 -> 6s as my next upgrade, because I use the headphone jack all the time and don't want to deal with dongles. Hopefully at some point Apple will bring out a new "low cost" iPhone option (SE replacement?) that still has the headphone jack.

 

[NecroKill]

Talk about a guy with too much time on his hands.

Indeed.

 

[Abazigal]

This is sort of the point but also evidences the other point i was trying to make.

Apple are not trying to 'usher in a new world order', they are a company. As an entity they exist solely to maximise revenue/profit and therefore return for their shareholders. They are not trying to create a 'meaningful change in the market', they are exploiting their position, as the largest company on the planet (the ****ing planet, people), to realise the aforementioned.

Christ on a cracker everybody, this is not a conspiracy theory, it's just what companies do. Apple just happen to do it the best, and this forum is pure evidence of why it works.

I know i wouldn't say anymore on this, but it's just so pants-on-head retarded that some of you don't see the logic of it. Apple spent $8.1 billion dollars on RnD in 2016, that represents 3.5% of their annual revenue.

They're not even trying: that's how strong their brand power is. If they bumped that to 10% of revenue do you have any idea what an entity could accomplish with that kind of money?

This guy did it on his own, hand him $10 billion dollars and see if he can't solve the "space issue".

Ugh, this hurts my head. Educate yourselves.

Except that Apple has been doing this sort of stuff long before they became the financial juggernaut they are today. The dropping of the floppy disk with the first iMac, the removal of the cd drive and practically every other port for the MacBook Air. They weren’t afraid to challenge the status quo even when they were on the brink of bankruptcy, and had the most to lose by “intentionally sabotaging” their products.

Apple does this because above everything else, they see themselves not as a tech company but as a design company. They pride themselves on using great design to rethink the user experience and reinvent the manner in which people interact with their devices. They do it not to make make a few quick bucks off the sales of dongles and adaptors but because they believe. They believe that such a move, while it will hurt in the short run, will be worth it (both for them and the customers) in the long run.

This boldness. This conviction. This “courage” is precisely what makes Apple so awesome in my book (and yes, so so irritating to others). That they march to their own beat and not give a crap about what everyone else is doing.

 

[DjanSeriyAnaplian]

Except that Apple has been doing this sort of stuff long before they became the financial juggernaut they are today. The dropping of the floppy disk with the first iMac, the removal of the cd drive and practically every other port for the MacBook Air. They weren’t afraid to challenge the status quo even when they were on the brink of bankruptcy, and had the most to lose by “intentionally sabotaging” their products.

Apple does this because above everything else, they see themselves not as a tech company but as a design company. They pride themselves on using great design to rethink the user experience and reinvent the manner in which people interact with their devices. They do it not to make make a few quick bucks off the sales of dongles and adaptors but because they believe. They believe that such a move, while it will hurt in the short run, will be worth it (both for them and the customers) in the long run.

This boldness. This conviction. This “courage” is precisely what makes Apple so awesome in my book (and yes, so so irritating to others). That they march to their own beat and not give a crap about what everyone else is doing.

I'm sorry but no, that's simply not true in Apple's current iteration. During the Jobs era i completely agree with you - that's what gave them their market capitalisation, by the way. The man was a visionary, a maverick and will likely not be replicated for some time.

Post Jobs they have the cash, revenue and all-encompassing brand presence to do literally whatever they want.

The Apple of Cook is not the Apple of Jobs. Jobs' talent to see where the market was heading and build an ecosystem around it will likely not be replicated for a long time. Cook is simply doing what any company CEO does: corporate finance 101 - maximise return, capitalise on gains.