14 DAY TRIAL // According to a patent granted to Apple by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a new and thinner type of headphone jack might be used by the Cupertino company for its future slimmer iPhone models.
As discovered by Patently Apple, the guys from Cupertino have been granted a new patent that describes a new headphone jack design, with the top part sliced off and thus usable on devices that need an audio socket slimmer than the standard 3.5 mm one.
The patent says that "the present invention provides an improved audio plug connector having a reduced plug length and thickness, an intuitive insertion orientation and a smooth, consistent feel when inserted and extracted from its corresponding receptacle connector."
Moreover, if the user wants to, the new jack could also be used with standard 3.5 mm sockets because the way it's sliced makes it possible to fit perfectly even though it doesn't fill the entire socket.
The new jack design comes as a surprise after the Lightning audio cables MFI specs of last year
This is a bit of a surprise since, about a year ago, Apple seemed to favor the Lightning port as their future audio connector port instead of the traditional headphone jack.
Besides removing the need for an extra socket at the bottom of future iPhone models, a Lightning cable connection for headphones would mean that the iOS device could be used to rewrite the headphones firmware or, if needed, power them. In other words, the internal battery in headphones that currently still require it will no longer be necessary.
What Apple will choose to use as the default audio socket in future thinner iPhones still remains to be seen, but until they make a decision, they seem to have at least two very good solutions to a very big problem they will definitely have to deal with.
