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HomeDIYYou Can Now Add A Working 3.5mm Headphone Jack To Your iPhone...

You Can Now Add A Working 3.5mm Headphone Jack To Your iPhone 7

Do you remember the world traveller guy (Scotty Allen) who came up with the daring idea of ​​picking up an iPhone 6s from spare parts bought on the market in China for less than half the price of a new one? Well, he’s back with another DIY. He recently completed his new project. He was able to equip the iPhone 7 with a 3.5 mm working connector. Now he can use any headphones with his iPhone without any adapter. Those who don’t wanna pay $159 for AirPods or cannot be bothered to insert their headphones into an adapter every time they listen to music needn’t drill a hole in their iPhone.

iPhone 7 with 3.5mm headphone jack
The iPhone enthusiast and world traveller Scotty Allen has taken upon himself to add a working 3.5mm headphone jack to his iP. Let’s see how he did it. Scotty Allen was impressed by the camera’s capabilities. The lack of a 3.5 mm jack greatly upset him, so he just decided to add it. He did it, but it was not at all easy.

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The project took 4 months. Thousands of dollars were spent on the realization of the dream. This money was paid not only for the work and rent of expensive equipment. They bought three iPhone 7 and a huge number of adapters. In the costs came out and other parts that Scotty broke, embodying his idea in life. In the end, the plan was successful. I had to create my own board with a digital-to-analog converter and a 3.5 mm connector, to make a hole in the case of iPhone 7 and make it work. Few people are ready to repeat this at home.

Note Be very sure You read this article to the End Including our final words on this You will Enjoy it.

In Scotty’s own words:

I’ve spent the past four months in Shenzhen, China, modifying an iPhone 7 to add a fully functional headphone jack. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has done anything like this.
In April, I decided to finally upgrade my iPhone 6s to an iPhone7 to get better camera quality for the videos I was shooting when I was out on adventures in the industrial markets and manufacturing world. But I was super annoyed that it doesn’t have a headphone jack! I already have headphones I really liked, and I didn’t like the idea of having to keep track of an adapter just to use them.

So I figured I’d add my own – after all, how hard could it be?

It turns out, really really hard. But possible.

I went through a ton of iterations and debugging to get this to work. The hardest parts were the electrical design and getting everything to fit inside the phone. Specifically, because I was using the logic from an Apple headphone adapter and a headphone jack from an iPhone 5, I had to find space to put them without breaking anything else. I feel like I got extremely lucky about finding space inside the phone. There was inexplicably a lot of extra room in the lower left hand corner, right where I wanted to put the headphone jack. 
And because I was connecting the headphone adapter to the lightning jack, I needed to figure out how to make the lightning jack still work for things like charging and syncing to a computer. I ended up designing lots of circuit boards that were more complex than anything I’ve ever done. I had three iterations of PCB designs manufactured, and 4 different flexible PCB designs.

I also ended up having to buy lots, and lots, and lots of spare parts. I went through 3 complete iPhone 7s, a handful of screens, and countless internal components (mostly bottom cable assemblies and taptic engines).

And I had to buy some new tools. I got a fancy binocular microscope for tiny soldering work (including hand soldering my own BGAs), and had to seriously level up my soldering equipment.

Also Read: The Most Interesting Laptops from the Exhibition IFA 2017

The nitty gritty

I’m pretty proud of the final implementation. I took apart an Apple lightning to headphone adapter, put that inside the phone, and hooked it up by man in the middling the lightning jack with a flexible PCB. The PCB has a switching chip that switches between connecting the headphone adapter to the phone by default, and then disconnecting it and connecting the lightning jack when something is plugged into it. 

I have a couple other timer chips that briefly disconnect everything from the phone when something is connected/disconnected to improve the reliability of the phone detecting when something is plugged/unplugged (otherwise it sometimes gets confused).

The final flexible PCB uses 5 mil/5mil traces and 0.5mm pitch BGAs. Which is pretty darn tiny. I managed to hand solder these under the microscope, and it turned out to be much easier than I expected, despite being my first time really doing any surface mount design or soldering. If surface mount scares you, buy a microscope! It’s a total game changer.

You can get the kicad files and gerbers here: github.com/strangeparts/niubi-headphones

The Flexible circuit board design for adding a headphone jack to an iPhone 7 is specialy design of this project is free for everyone. You have Scotty Allen full permission to make modification and improvement however you like.

Here is a picture of the board on the bottom flex cable.

Scotty have used the internal circuit board from an official Apple headphone adapter. The circuit connects this board to the lightning jack on the bottom flex connector. When something is plugged into the lightning jack, the signal is switched from the headphone adapter to the lightning jack. There is a 1 megaohm resistor that pulls the shield of the lightning connector to 3v. This is shorted to ground when a connector is plugged into the headphone jack. This is how the switching chip senses that something was plugged in. Whenever something is plugged or unplugged, one of the two timers fires, temporarily disabling the switching chip for 100ms (I think), which appears to be necessary for the phone to sense that something has been plugged in.

This design is open source under an MIT license, and you’re very welcome to modify and improve on this design, and even manufacture it yourself. If you do, I’d love to hear about it.
This isn’t just about a headphone jack though – I think this design can be adapted to put other lightning based adapters inside an iPhone, while still allowing the lightning jack to function. It’s mostly just a matter of finding room inside the phone!

Final Words

It’s super annoyed that it doesn’t have a headphone jack. We later joined Scotty Allen and few people who repeat this at home to add.a working 3.5 mm headphone jack to an iPhone 7. How hard could it be? It turns out, really really hard and scaring. Doing this really requires courage and skills, So we will advise not to try if You don’t posses this Two. 

There is this fear in You, of loosing Your expensive device even despite the good work-through from Scotty. But IF You are a DIY Freak type Who is ready to repeat this at home then You can GO ON BUT make sure you watch every single step in that video and You will be successful in adding 3.5 mm headphone jack to a 3.5 mm jack connector Non-supportive device. 
We also Made Success Adding the Jack and it was so Awesome. Wish more enthusiasts engaged in DIY projects like Scotty but it’s understandable many don’t given the high price of Apple’s smartphone. I hope this website Grows Fast and DIY Guys at TechZuma inc will also Join the likes of Scotty Allen to become DIY Masters taking Expensive Risks.
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