Watch a man mod a headphone jack into his iPhone 7

Scotty Allen, a.k.a Strange Parts, recently did a fairly impressive stunt by assembling his own iPhone 6s from spare parts, but his latest hack has a much more practical application. Namely, he managed to successfully squeeze a 3.5 mm jack into an iPhone 7 unit — but don't get your hopes for grabbing one for yourself just yet.

The whole process took more than four months and cost at least $1,000 in broken iPhone parts, and you can watch the detailed making-of in the video above. The end result can be seen at the 30 minute mark, and while it looks pretty good, it's still pretty obvious that this is just a hack.

In order to achieve his goal, Allen had to move some of the iPhone's internals upwards — including the battery and the Taptic Engine — and put a reconstructed version of the headphone jack dongle inside the empty space where the left speaker grille sits. Also, he designed his own custom printed circuit board to make the hardware interact well with the rest of the phone.

And while this does prove that a headphone jack in the iPhone 7 is a technical possibility, the huge amount of work and skill required make it a no-go for all but the most devoted enthusiasts. Still, Allen's reportedly printed several hundred of his custom PCBs in hopes Chinese manufacturers will mass producing modded iPhone 7 units.

source: Strange Parts via Motherboard