The iPhone 7 – Jack is back! - Yanko Design

It'due south finer been a year since Apple killed the headphone jack… and this year something big is on its style. No it isn't the iPhone 8. It'southward the iPhone 7 headphone hack! Aye, I say hack, because serial tinkerer, Scotty Allen literally hacked his iPhone 7 to fit in a performance headphone jack! Here's how…

Remember how initial teardowns of the iPhone 7 revealed that the area where the headphone jack would usually sit was not occupied by a speaker, merely in fact lay empty because Apple executives said that the gap was a "barometric vent" that helped the iPhone's altimeter work with precision? Well, Scotty decided to make a trade-off by filling that gap with a headphone jack. He first figured out how the circuitry would work, by connecting a headphone port component to the lightning port of the phone. While this worked in practice, it had one major flaw. The solution would mean the lightning port would finish charging the phone (because of a circuitry overlap). Scotty then decided to use Apple tree'due south Lightning to Aux adapter and craft himself a circuit switcher out of a flexible PCB, and voila! Afterwards more than 15 weeks of constant little with the iPhone's electronics, he managed to brand a solution that worked. Oh yes, he too had a neat little hole CNC machined into the side of the telephone for the headphone jack to slide through. The end upshot would allow the jack to work perfectly, and the lightning port to accuse the phone too… but non together. While that seems like a small caveat, information technology goes to bear witness that Apple tree's ways aren't always the best for the consumers, and given the opportunity to set up or hack one'due south electronics, there volition ever be someone who puts a consumer's needs above the strategies of a technological super-company.

The process of putting a headphone jack onto the iPhone seven is by no measure out an easy one. The video shows how many times Scotty had to try (and fail) to get his solution to work. It involved a lot of broken hardware. However, he decided to publish all the necessary files on github. Although exist warned… the price of innovation doesn't come up inexpensive (in other words, endeavour this on a spare phone please). You can cheque out Scotty's Foreign Parts website to read about his endeavor.

Video Credits: Scotty Allen