- 🤔 One of Apple’s most famous accessories seems to have been discontinued
- 👋 The Lightning to 3.5mm jack adapter has sold out in the US
- 🌎 It’s also not available in other countries
- 🎧 The adapter was introduced in 2016 when Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7
Controversial? Unpopular I can understand, but that’s not the same.
I still prefer wired buds and chose a phone with a 3.5mm jack, but I wasn’t into Apple phones to begin with.
Now that Apple is going USB C, the lightning adapter will stop mattering, I guess.
You make a good point. When a small number of people complain loudly but most people don’t care, I’m not sure that’s “controversy.” The majority don’t care but this accessory is for the minority who do, and they hate it, so yeah “hated” would not be overstating it :)
Oh you mean the discontinuation rather than the accessory itself. Meh, there is always ebay. Someone will always have an extra one left from their old phone before they upgraded to a usb-c phone.
The USB-C one is a great deal, and good quality. If you need one for other devices too.
Just a heads up for android users (like me):
It might not work at full power on android because fuck you. They made it so it has only 50% power on android.
I’ve never heard this before. And I use it on a VR headset. It’s actually louder than another option I have.
Yes, Apple’s USB-C > 3.5mm DAC dongle is not properly compatible with Android devices . The roughly -25dB gain applied appears to be by design.
How to charge* and listen/speak simultaneously?
EDIT: misspell
Wireless charging and/or wireless headphones. Or a powered usb c hub.
Yeah, I’m not here to say it’ll fix every USB need you have for a device. It’s only $9. It’s not a USB hub.
I recently bought a cheap phone after I broke my main one, because I needed something while my main one was being “repaired”. It turns out that this new cheap phone has a headphone jack AND a better stylus. It also had a solid 1000mah bigger battery and 10w extra of charging over my old flagship.
When the repair shop told me that the 20 cent ribbon connector couldn’t be replaced and that the repair would be $600 for a new screen and glass back, I decided to keep the cheap phone, which works damn well. It’s so nice to have a headphone jack to use again. All my other shit still has headphones jacks from my PC/laptop/SD to my car and stuff like kitchen stereos. I can use my Bluetooth earbuds, but they only have about 5 hours of playback and have a bad click in one bud after the first year of use.
I’m almost disappointed at how good this mid-range, $250 phone is compared to my $1,700 Samsung. I’ve been wasting money for years on flagships. Not going back after I got my data transferred to my new phone.
What cheap phone would that be ?
Moto g stylus 5g.
There’s really a lot of good value devices out there once you get past the barely functional underpowered cheapo range.
Also though… you spent $250 on a phone just while waiting for your main phone to be repaired?
Once I knew it was $600 to repair, I bought a cheaper phone. I had plans to buy a used version of my flagship and raid it for parts, but in the end, it just didn’t pencil out financially.
Plus, I hadn’t had a phone for a week+ and it was getting difficult to do work since my job requires 2FA on personal devices (a terrible idea, btw).
The one with the lightning connector that none of their new devices have and there’s a million 3rd party options for old phones?
Gee what a surprise they don’t want to make them anymore!!! /s
Seems a little early doesn’t it? I know the iPhone 15 and 16 have a USB type C, but don’t they still sell devices that have the lighting port?
I mean if you’re buying the apple version sold on their website a 5x market value instead of an off brand one that’s on you.
It’s $10 and high quality. How much do you think you’re saving with a junk off brand one?
You got a point, and I looked on amazon. Most bundle 2 or 3 into one, and the price is around $10 with a few above and not many below. I did find a 2 pack for $5. so I guess 50% because that’s definitely the one I would buy.
And when it’s junk out of the box because random no-name Amazon cables are universally terrible?
Can confirm it is terrible. I bought a pack from Amazon and both of them have terrible DAC artifact noises. Should have gone with the Apple one.
Unironically, the Apple USB-C DAC is the best you can buy for that price. You’d have to go for something double or triple its price to get the same performance from any other dongle, specially at that size.
The off brand ones are noisy and sounds like shit, the apple one was worth the money over that shit.
True
Yup, iPhone SE 3 for example
I thought so.
I don’t think they do, iirc the watches and ipads both use type c
What about the iphone SE?
They still make the SE?
I think so, the SE 3. With that said i won’t swear to that because I hardly ever look at Apple. I have been an Android user for more than a decade now and so have very little reason to keep up with their products other than they flagship.
I thought that was because everyone just bought $3 off-brand ones on Amazon.
*On TEMU or AliExpress.
Get in losers, we’re going to the future.
Audio jack needs to die.
On the contrary. If I’m paying double the price on a flagship compared to 8 years ago, then I want more features not less.
I still use a c to audio adapter most of the time when I’m out and about. My wired earbuds don’t need to charge, have much better sound quality than wireless, and if one side falls out of my ear it just swings down instead of falling into the dirt/water/snow. As far as I’m concerned the only benefit of wireless is that they can’t catch on anything, and that’s more a skill issue than anything imo
