Apple will drop headphone jack to make the IPhone 7 slimmer | Hacker News Reader

Apple will drop headphone jack to make the IPhone 7 slimmer

fastcompany.com

12 pointsksashikumar19 comments

When phones first started playing MP3s the manufacturers were very reluctant to put a 3.5mm jack in them (I'm not quite sure why...). I had phones which required custom adapters, either for proprietary ports or for 2.5mm jacks. They were a complete pain to use, really easy to forget at home, and as a result I never really listened to music using my phone.

Just think of how many times this will really annoy an iPhone user. In an older car? Aux cable doesn't fit. Lost your headphones? 90% of the replacements won't work (I'm sure eventually headphone manufacturers will catch up, but it'll take a while). At a party? Can't play music.

In my experience, trying to get Bluetooth or other wireless streaming systems working at a party when 10 different people want to play music is a nightmare. The aux cable is a solid reliable backup.

Has anyone ever asked for a slimmer phone. Doesn't everyone ask for a bigger battery when asked?

People want small, lightweight, elegant phones with large screens and batteries. Something has to give.

I'm surprised there's a net market advantage in making a phone slimmer than 7mm or so, though.

Do you actually happen to know anyone of these people?

People who want a small phone with a large screen, and a lightweight phone with a large battery? Sure.

I think the hundreds of millions of people buying slimmer iPhones probably wanted them.

They wanted them, all right - it doesn't follow that they wanted them because they were a few mm slimmer.

Or because it was the only option for people who want an iPhone.

Exactly.

The thinness is to generate an emotional reaction. When you pick up an iPhone in an Apple Store, it's supposed to feel so nice in your hands that you have to buy it, specs be damned.

Something similar can be done with USB.

If you look at the USB type C connector specification, you'll notice that it already defines one alternate mode in its single appendix: a headphone alternate mode. That is, with the correct hardware in the phone, and a passive USB-C to 3.5mm jack adapter (also described in that appendix), new phones from other manufacturers which use the type C connector would be able to follow Apple's lead and drop the headphone jack. (And in case you were wondering, that alternate mode can charge at 500mA and connect to the headphone jack at the same time in a single USB-C connection.)

Elephant in the room: vendor lock-in.

Why not use the 2.5 jack connector?

Because it's not proprietary enough?

Edit: Original response was a little tongue-in-cheek. More seriously though perhaps they will start bundling Bluetooth headphones as standard. A slim phone plus a "bulky" lightning to 3.5mm adapter doesn't sound like something Apple would do.

> A slim phone plus a "bulky" lightning to 3.5mm adapter doesn't sound like something Apple would do.

Oh no, that sounds exactly what Apple would do.

Because it takes up lots of space inside the phone? In a phone that thin, the space for a jack connector and its supporting circuitry might compete with another 50-100mAh battery capacity. That's a difficult position for something as obscure as the 2.5mm jack.

The article suggests the phone will also be waterproof. It may be that any kind of jack connector would compromise the waterproofing.

Samsung Galaxy S5 is rated IP67, yet there's a jack connector (unprotected, at least not apparently). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code

Sounds like they want to make their phones easier to bend :)

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