Report from iPhone 7 supply chain says no 3.5mm audio jack

Prepare to kiss your tangled headphones goodbye – a report allegedly from the iPhone 7 supply chain claims that Apple is indeed dropping the analog 3.5mm audio jack. Instead, wired headphones will connect to the Lightning port and, of course, there's the wireless Bluetooth option too. A Lightning-to-3.5mm will also exist.

Apple's motives are two-fold – the make the iPhone thinner and to push sales of wireless headphones. We're going back to the dark ages of proprietary audio. Also, your expensive Lightning headphones probably won't work with your computer and other non-Apple devices.

It seems that the Lightning port does not support analog audio (the old 30-pin connector did). No analog from the port itself means that wired headphones will have to carry their own DAC and amp with them.

This will make them complicated, expensive and probably more battery hungry (not to mention that occupying the Lightning port prevents you from charging your phone). Remember the $50 Lightning-to-HDMI adapter? The one with a built-in chipset with 256MB of RAM? Yeah.

As usual, take this unconfirmed report with a grain of salt. Nay, keep your fingers crossed that it's just plain trolling.

Source (in Chinese) | Via