There is not a single person who has not complained about the iPhone 7 not having a headphone jack. As much as we would like to whine, this did not deter the Apple fans from buying the latest phone, and hence, it became the best selling smartphone in the world. Sure, you can do fine with an adapter or just the airpods, but you can also give your phone a headphone jack. At least that is what Scotty Allen, the Strange Parts creator, did.
Adding a headphone jack back to the iPhone is no tiny DIY project because it took Allen almost 17 weeks and a ton of broken parts to do this. However, in the end, he was able to have a current generation iPhone with a fully functional headphone jack.
Allen converted the 17-week project details into a video saga that show his struggle of bringing back the jack to his iPhone 7. He spent thousands of dollars, bought multiple iPhones and screens, got multiple iterations of self-designed flexible circuit boards, and even got to a chip dealer. The project got him to buy a microscope and a pair of fancy tweezers as well.
We are not gonna try counting the infinite number of parts that Allen broke on the way, but it did get hard enough while forcing him to give up. Weeks of effort resulted in the final iPhone with lightning to headphone jack adapter that was incorporated into the internal structure of the phone. The headphone jack is powered by the lightning jack with a circuit board, so you can not use both of them at the same time. You can either use the headphone jack or the lightning port, but other than that, there is no problem at all.
It won’t be a piece of cake, but Scotty Allen has still made the project available on Github. Wanna try it out? Think again!
