Apple is working on its iPhone 7 which will be released September 2016. Japanese blog Macotakara is reporting that the tech giant will remove the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack which was used for EarPods. The EarPods will be replaced “with those that plug in through the device’s Lightning port.” Or else they’ll require an adapter. (The iPhone would be thinner without the jack.)
Lightning port not only sounds dramatic, it is. The change would make the jackless iPhone incompatible with current EarPods and most every other headphone on the market. It also reduces the number of things the phone can do at once — for example, users wouldn’t be able to charge the phone and use wired EarPods simultaneously. (One answer Apple will have fun giving to this rare dilemma is just how infrequently you’ll have to charge its newest iPhone.) For those iPhone users who aren’t ready or willing to throw away their EarPods, Macotakara suggests that they will “likely need an adapter that plugs into the Lightning port.”
