Lightning headphones

With the iPhone 7 (or whatever Apple calls it) looking increasingly likely to lose the 3.5mm headphone socket, Chinese accessory makers are gearing up to meet demand from those who don’t want to replace their existing headphones. Macotakara spotted a couple of Chinese companies who are already advertising 3.5mm-to-Lightning adapters.

It’s unlikely these are real products yet, especially as one claims to be MFi-certified. They are more likely dummies or prototypes, perhaps created for submission for MFi status. Also pictured below are some smaller Lightning adapters and earbuds though probably not the ones Apple intends to bundle with the next iPhone.

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With Apple widely believed to be planning to drop the headphone socket in the iPhone 7 in favor of Lightning-connected and wireless headphones, a patent application published today describes how a single set of headphones could switch smoothly between wired and wireless modes without any interruption of playback.

There’s of course nothing new in headphones that support both wired and wireless use – many Bluetooth headphones come supplied with a plug-in audio cable that allow them to fall back to wired use if they run low on battery power or you just want the higher quality a wired connection typically delivers.

But switching between wired and wireless use typically has a couple of issues, and Apple’s patent aims to solve both of them …

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Japanese blog Macotakara claims that Apple is planning better-than-CD quality audio for iTunes at some point in 2016.

According to several insiders familiar with Apple, whose products are exhibited at Portable Audio Festival, Apple has been developing hi-res audio streaming up to 96kHz/24-bit in 2016.

By way of comparison, CDs offer 44kHz/16-bit. The sources cited appear to be manufacturers making Lightning-based headphones, which would support the hi-res format. It should be noted, however, that Apple has been sourcing at least some of its music at 96kHz/24-bit for many years …

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Apple has consistently worked at making the iPhone ever slimmer, and has been willing to make compromises to achieve that, most notably in battery-life. But with the iPhone 6 and 6s, it is close to the limit on how slim an iPhone can be – and the reason for that is the oldest piece of tech in the phone. The iPhone 6/6s is not very much thicker than the diameter of the 3.5mm headphone jack.

The latest iPod touch shows that Apple has a little more room for manoeuvre (above photo Anandtech, below iFixit).

But really not much. If Apple wants to continue the iPhone’s diet, at some point very soon it’s going to have to ditch the 3.5mm headphone socket in favor of an alternative. There are four possible options open to it … 
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Apple’s annual MFi summit, an event for accessory manufacturers in its Made-for-iPhone/iPad/iPod licensing program, will focus on getting accessory makers ready for new technologies including HomeKit hardware, iBeacon, Apple’s new Lightning headphones spec, and game controllers, according to Apple’s official event schedule.
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When Apple quietly created a new MFi spec for headphones, allowing them to connect via the Lightning port rather than the headphone jack to deliver higher-quality audio, everyone expected Apple-owned Beats to be first to take advantage of it. But instead Philips has, ah, beaten them to it … 
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