Love your iPhone 7, but wish it had a headphone jack? Guess what, you can totally add one — all it takes is some serious technical know how and a willingness to possibly destroy your phone in the process.
That’s at least according to one noted tinkerer, who figured out a way to install a working headphone jack inside of his iPhone 7. And no, he didn’t just drill a hole through it (please don’t do that).
Instead, Scotty Allen of Strange Parts took apart a used iPhone 7 and actually connected a headphone jack to the phone’s circuitry. The process was super involved, and, as his 33-minute video demonstrating the work makes clear, definitely painstaking.
Oh yeah, and it involved him designing a custom-printed circuit board.
Perhaps most interesting about the entire thing is that Allen found room in the phone itself for the necessary additional parts. Granted, he had to remove what he said was a “barometric vent” — something that reportedly helps the phone gauge altitude — but he obviously decided that he didn’t care too much about the feature.
And in the end, it seemed to be all worth it. Video recorded by Allen shows him adjusting volume and pausing music with controls on the headphones, and when he pulled the jack out the tunes stopped playing. Pretty sleek stuff.
So there you have it. An iPhone 7 with a headphone jack is not only possible, but it exists. All it took was someone with enough courage to pull it off.
