With a little puck, you won’t miss 3.5mm jack on iPhone

By

If you need a place to plug in . . .
If you need a place to plug in . . .
Photo: Sean Nelson

Your next iPhone probably won’t have a headphone jack, and Sean Nelson is telling you to get over it. But he says so gently by offering iPhone fans a glimpse of what a jackless future might look like.

The industrial design student has drawn up one way Apple or any other third-party company might bridge the 3.5mm gap with a small Bluetooth headphone puck. Under Nelson’s concept, our soon-to-be-outdated headphones would plug into a small, clip-on disk.

Fans seldom ask Apple to stop being innovative, but the thought of not being able to plug headphones directly into their iPhones is too much from some. Speculation has generated a lot of headlines in the tech press and a petition with more than 200,000 signers asking Apple to keep the plug.

Apple isn’t about to ignore an iPhone user’s need for music or sniff at those old-school headphones you love so much. With such an iPhone, Apple would likely sell a Lightning port adapter for those who do not have wireless headphones.

It's a Bluetooth puck that extends the life of those soon-to-be old-school headphones.
It’s a Bluetooth puck that extends the life of those soon-to-be old-school headphones.
Photo: Sean Nelson

Nelson’s idea is simple and reassuring that we’ll all be OK without a headphone jack.

“Our end-goal shouldn’t be pushing music into a metal hole until the end of time, so focusing on a Lightning converter seemed silly,” Nelson wrote on his blog, which features his headphone puck concept. “What made sense to me was instead turning standard headphones into Bluetooth headphones, and thus, this little design exercise was born.”

You can check out Nelson’s other ideas on his website or his page on Behance.

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