There is only one source of the rumor though. All those google results are people discussing the one source. Or web blogs capitalizing on the opportunity for more ad revenue. Apple news sells, accurate or not. If there's no rumors to generate ad revenue, there's always something to spin into a "-gate" controversy. Much like a broken clock being right twice a day, sometimes these rumors or controversies speak to the truth or scope the problem appropriately.

Once the iPhone 7 case goes into mass production likely in the Spring of 2016, then I'll start putting a little more faith behind this being true. At that point multiple sources could appear from the leaky supply chain.

Theorizing here, the audio quality crowd might be applauding if this rumor is true. It would allow the signal to remain digital all the way across the wire to the headphones and utilize a good DAC inside the headphones closer to the speakers.

Though it looks like the DAC inside the iPhones is already pretty good. With only rumors, and a handful of Lightning headphones in existence, hard to tell what would be better currently.

I sometimes wonder if my replies are invisible around here

I thought that was an excellent promotion from Samsung, that $1 for a month of use thing. If something like that had existed over here, I surely would have taken them up on it too.

Of course, this is not about true hatred. Hatred is such a strong word anyway, very much overused (I'm guilty of that too)
I think I read it best just this week, when I read someone claiming that "every system has its pros, it's just about how much you can live with the cons". I think this is very true.
For me:
Apple: very stable, very secure, just works. Cons: not much freedom of movement because Apple dictates it all (but this is probably necessary to make it "just work"), sometimes fewer features because of that, price.
Android: pros: more freedom, cheaper (though not with the true high-end models anymore, like eg. the new Nexus 6P) cons: not as secure, higher learning curve.(though I guess this is getting a lot better with recent Android builds)

I'm not considering other OS'es like Windows phone, Ubuntu or Firefox.


Even more, I think if any company would "dare" to do this, it would be Apple. But indeed, wait and see is the best policy I guess.

And now Apple sells their own.

For an Apple product, that is shockingly ugly.

If there's one thing we've learned over and over again, it's that the audiophile community is so small as to be meaningless to the likes of Apple and Google. The majority of smartphone buyers just don't care. From low bitrate to bluetooth audio, people want convenience far more than audio quality. Have you seen how many LG Tone headphones are out there now? I see them more than Beats headphones now.

And speaking of Beats, I'll bet that if this rumor is true, when they announce the iPhone 7 you might see a line of Beats headphones with the lightning jack built in. Or perhaps a model with a swappable cable.

Back on point. Tony, have you tested any bluetooth 3 or 4 headphones? I'd be interested in knowing if the audio quality has improved. From what I've read, it's something they were focusing on in versions 3/4. I'm an LG Tone owner, and my bluetooth 3 headphones (with "aptX" or whatever) sound pretty darn good.

I'm in the unusual (for me) position of defending Apple on this one I wouldn't care if the headphone jack went away. The one concern I'd have is that if you were to move to using the lightning for headphones, it might put too much additional stress on that connection.


Bluetooth headphones are just soooo much more convenient. The only drawback is having another device to charge, although I get really great battery life with mine.

Every time I've used headphones to listen to stuff around the house during chores, I end up getting the cord snagged on something. If I'm doing the dishes, I'll get caught on a drawer pull three or four times. My LG Tone headphones are one of my top 10 favorite gadgets I own.

It doesn't bug me too much. My guess is that they went for the bump in order to get a unibody design and not mess with the camera area too much.

You don't say, that may well be the ugliest bit of hardware Apple have ever made. That is shockingly bad.

Bringing the thread full circle, the first USB 3.0 speed Lightning product. Lightning to SD card reader.

No, I saw it! First thing I thought of when I read Tony's post.

Of course, not having a cell phone, and not caring if Apple gets rid of their headphone jack, I'm only really reading this thread in case there are any good digressions.

If work didn't force me to have a cell phone, I wouldn't have one either. People do seem to get a kick out of my (work provided) flip phone, though.

Semi-seriously. For the last few years I've been using wireless Sennheiser headphones that are really a work of crap. My daughter's no brand bluetooth headphones sound fantastic in comparison.

The headphone jack removal rumor keeps bubbling up in places as it moves through the layers of reporting. A podcast I listen to brought up another angle.

A headphone jack on the outside looks like a circle, and often on phones is helping to illustrate the thickness of the device. It's important to also remember it's a cylinder needing to occupy a fair amount of internal space. That plug and jack has already shrank from it's origins from the quarter inch (6.35mm) size to the mini headphone jack popularized I believe by the Walkman.

Getting rid of that intrusion into the interior space of the phone would allow a battery to increase in volume without changing the thickness of the device.

iFixit's teardown of the iPhone 5s has a good photo illustrating this. The headphone jack is on the bottom left, and the top of it touches the battery. It looks like design wise that dictated some other factors there, with some space on the right side being used for the speaker cavity. The iPhone (and many other devices) avoids placing the headphone jack directly under the screen.

Current Apple rumors claim that an iPhone 5 sized device is going to return to the lineup with iPhone 6/6s like features for those who prefer smaller devices. There's a chance this headphone rumor might be verified as true for that device first in March, ahead of a possible iPhone 7 later this year.

The mini size was used by most of the "transistor" pocket radios of the 1950s.

Oops, right. Looked up the Walkman again, I was misremembering the dual mini headphone jacks it launched with, which in some places popularized shared private listening.

I didn't remember that about it. I had the recording walkman, which I sneaked into concerts. Wonderful stuff, Sony. I pretty much only used it for recording, and it broke probably before 100 usages, while being treated like glass. Of course everything Sony makes is unrepairable...

My daughters sure have it good. iPhones with bluetooth earbuds, they can listed to music all day in high school. In my day, headphones were huge and music sources were the size of bricks. Very hard to conceal from even the most tedious of teachers.

Mainly it was moved because the "forehead" area is very busy. There's the driver ledge (with the glass-mounted chip that drives the display), two cameras, the earpiece (complete with hearing aid compatibility, which means a bigger coil), antennas for gps, wifi, bluetooth and cellular (secondary TX, because transmitting out the bottom is better for SAR as it's further from your head), proximity sensor, several microphones and loads of flexes.

Much easier to have it down in the main antenna area where the main occupants are antennas, menu/touch button, lightning connector, speaker+acoustic volume and a mic. Less flexes, more room in general.