Apple Says It Ditched the Headphone Jack to Enable Significant Camera, Battery, and Water Resistance Improvements
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Posted September 8, 2016 at 1:55am by iClarified
In a BuzzFeed interview following the unveiling of the iPhone 7, Apple executives explain why they ditched the headphone jack.
“The audio connector is more than 100 years old,” said Apple VP Greg Joswiak. “It had its last big innovation about 50 years ago. You know what that was? They made it smaller. It hasn’t been touched since then. It’s a dinosaur. It’s time to move on.”
Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior VP of hardware engineering, said “We’ve got this 50-year-old connector — just a hole filled with air — and it’s just sitting there taking up space, really valuable space. In a world of mobile and cellular connectivity, the one wired vestige out there is this cable hanging from people’s ears to their phones — why?”
“It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone,” reveals Riccio. “It was fighting for space with camera technologies and processors and battery life. And frankly, when there’s a better, modern solution available, it’s crazy to keep it around.”
Ricco explains the the driver ledge, a small printed circuit board that drives the display and backlight was typically placed at the top of the device. Unfortunately, the driver ledge interfered with the iPhone 7's larger camera system so Apple wanted to move it lower in both models but there it interfered with the audio jack.
Engineers tried removing the jack and they discovered it was easier to install the new Taptic Engine that is needed for the new touch sensitive home button. Second, they were able to increase the battery's size. The iPhone 7 battery is now 14% bigger and the iPhone 7 Plus battery is now 5% bigger. This gives iPhone 7 users an additional two hours of battery life and iPhone 7 Plus users an additional hour.
Finally, removing the audio jack eliminated a key point of ingress that helped the iPhone meet IP7 water resistance.
More like you need to be waking up, not assuming without researching and btw the jack hasn't been innovative since the smaller version of it, the 2.5mm jack.
Ok how is speaker water resistant iP67 but headphone jack is not ? Other manufacturers have iP67 headphone jacks!!!
But stereo??? Don't you see that the speaker replacing the headphone jack is just 3-4 time smaller than the main speaker!!!
So how they will sound equal??? One has large acoustic volume chamber and the other NOT!!!
Why the f0ck did you ever put the second one?? To justify the removal of the free analog standard??
It's that the headphone jack has air, the speakers here push the water out like the Apple Watch, plus the 2nd speaker even if it's small is what help amplifies the sound even by its design to deliver sound let alone being 2 of them! The main reason the jack was removed was because 1. It's over 100 years old and we eventually move forward from this, 2. Wireless is becoming more amazing and getting rid of wires. 3. It takes up space of something better to go there.
Apple is right on this one let's try something new however people please do remember this is not a recording studio we are talking about here this is our mobile phones as much as I do know wireless ( I should never say never or would never beat) wires headphones I do think this is a big step forward into making wireless just as good as wired and of this is possible and do believe that Apple made the right choice this time. They will never make a decision if they didn't perfect the technology in which they are giving us. I will trust apple airpods to deliver better quality over those $300 beats crap any day.
HTC back in 2008 came out without audiojack and instead used adapters in the charging port, just like the lightning adapter here. Unfortunately, it was widely criticized as the biggest flaw.
Not much folks had HTC like today's iPhone add there aware many wiresless headphones available. Stop comparing what didn't work back then with today. Times have changed many times over since then.
Cars are 100 years old, so do we stop using the technology they use. Or do we abandon the technology that a many of iphone users use to plug them into vehicles.
Hmm wheel is soo old let's replace it with something much more expensive!!! Tha only we can license as lightning chip.
And iP67 when the iWatch is 50 meter submersible??? May be next years we may do the iphone 50meters or at least iP68 when we are out of innovations :)
Really? The phone that costs the same like 6s include lightning headphones so what you mean that's more expensive??? Besides, it's a long shot before they're out of ideas.
Well .... how do I charge & listen to lightening handsfree?
Let me guess ..... I should also buy a wireless charging device or spend another $159 to buy a bluetooth wireless Apple handsfree!!!
Don't think they ever claimed water proof. They just said water-resistant, just like what they integrated with the new iPhone 7. It's just that other phone makers were able to provide water-resistant phones with the audio-jack.
Lots of angry children here lol. Why even argue about water resistance etc
Apple need to innovate and they aren't enough. Each year it's evolutionary. Nothing more
Lol. Some of the old iPhones also suffered some exploding battery packs. You don't see those articles because Apple paid those news media outlets and customers to keep hush.
@A non e moose Or you are wrong/ not many people experienced exploding iPhone which there are some articles about that since the 5 (I think that's around the time) Apple would have to try that hard to hush people about it, but that would be defending themeselves which never happened.
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