Apple might scrap the headphone jack on the iPhone 7

Thin smartphones are the in thing at the moment and despite the iPhone 6s being 0.2mm thicker and 14 grams heavier than the iPhone 6 (which is likely due to the addition of 3D Touch technology), it looks like Apple wants to make the next generation iPhone the thinnest yet.

According to reports, Apple are planning to shave at least 1mm off the current iPhone thickness for its next generation iPhone and they will do this by abandoning the headphone jack, which a second source has now also claimed is true.

This will mean in the future you will only be able to use Bluetooth wireless headphones, headphones made with a Lightning port or you’ll have to use an adapter to convert your current headphones to work with a Lightning port.

Of course we can’t see this going down very well with Apple fans. Everybody already has wired headphones, not everyone wants to use Apple’s own wireless headphones or Lightning port headphones and what happens when you don’t have Bluetooth headphones but you need to charge your phone?

Yet, Apple has in the past made some similar decisions putting design over usability, for example last year’s MacBook with just a single USB Type-C port.

However, it does seem hard to believe Apple would be removing the 3.5mm port which has been an industry standard for decades now. And do we even need thinner smartphones? I’m sure most people will agree especially considering thinner usually means the device could potentially bend too (as we saw with the iPhone 6).

Despite being able to see lots of potential problems and complaints with this decision, when it comes down to Apple, design is obviously a huge factor and they may put that first.

But we still have another 9 months or so until the release of the next generation iPhone so we have quite a while to wait until we find out if this is just a rumour or if Apple is willing to take the risk and abandon the headphone jack.