Apple could be planning to do away with the 3.5mm headphone jack on the iPhone 7, if new reports are to be believed.
The normally reliable 9to5Mac cites a Japanese blog as the source of the murmurs. The thinking, apparently, is that by doing away with the standard headphone port the company can make the next iPhone "more than 1mm" thinner.
Instead, headphones would connect via either the iPhone's Lightning port, or wirelessly using Bluetooth. In what is no doubt a massive coincidence, Apple happens to own Beats, a company that makes expensive headphones and which can presumably expect a massive uptick in sales if Apple does decide to do away with the decades-old headphone standard.
Better quality tunes
From a technological standpoint, the upside of such a change could mean better quality audio being delivered to our ears, as transmission between iPhone and headphones will be entirely digital. However, it also means that your headphones will no longer be compatible with just about every other device on the planet.
This isn't the first time such a change has been rumoured. Earlier this year there was talk of the iPhone switching to the much less common 2.5mm headphone standard.
Last year Apple introduced audio support through the Lightning port, while Phillips beat the competition to become the first company to release headphones that connect through that port – the Fidelio M2L.
Such a move would no doubt cause huge controversy, so it'll be interesting to see if Apple dares to make the switch.
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