Thoughts about my experiences with a new iPhone 7 without a headphone jack

Early this year the tech world exploded over that there wouldn’t be a headphone jack in the new iPhone, there are still blind people who say they won’t buy another one because of that; and Although I wasn’t happy about it, i thought boycotting them altogether was a bit too far. When Belkin announced their Lightning audio plus charge Rockstar  with 2 Lightning ports and Apple announced including their new $9 Lightning to headphone adaptor, I felt the annoyance was easily resolvable. Even with this resolution, some of those earlier mentioned extremists still won’t buy another iPhone saying it just makes the phone $50 more expensive than the already high price. Yes, spending $40 for an extra dongle to carry around so you can use wired headphones and charge simultaneously is annoying, but in the end I still don’t find it that big of a deal, even with a low income. Even though Apple does include one of their adaptors, I have bought 2 more and 1 sits in a drawer as a spare..

I got my iPhone 7 on October 4, and I was told the Belkin dongle wasn’t available yet until November second, ye that was annoying. A few Skype calls ended prematurely because of a dying battery, and some times I had to use Bluetooth headphones so I could charge, and then there was the pillow speaker I use when going to bed. For the first week I used my old iPhone 6 plus to play podcasts or audio books before sleeping, but I really wanted to use the new iPhone for everything and didn’t want to wait for the dongle.

Then I had a bit of intuition. I remembered I had 2 Anker Bluetooth adaptors, that I used for my combining audio streams into one Bluetooth headset project, so I paired one of them to the pillow speaker and it worked, great; except for 1 problem. The adaptors also run on a battery, and batteries still don’t last forever for some reason. I turned the adapter on so that it was receiving Bluetooth audio from my phone and piping it to the speaker, then I plugged it into USB to charge, and it shut off. I was momentarily frustrated, but then I just turned it back on again and it worked, even when charging on USB and it kept working, for 3 days until I unplugged it, and was still all charged up; problem solved. Finally the Belkin Lightning port Rockstar was available, even a week early, and it is nice to have; though I don’t need 2 of them as i originally thought I would with 1 going to the pillow speaker. The Bluetooth adaptor costs $30, so saved $10 there too. Now that I can charge and use wired headphones simultaneously even when charging like I could before when iPhones had headphone jacks, I can sigh with relief; that is until I forget to take the dongle with me somewhere. Still, for the most part, it puts the no headphone jack problem back into the tea pot with all the tempests of tempestuous pasts.