Jackin’ an iPod jack for the iPhone

Okay, some of you know by now that I caved and bought an iPhone. I just couldn’t take the proper lack of sync software between my Palm Treo 650 and my Mac and had Verizon Wireless released the Treo 755 I would have still been one of their customers for another two years, but I digress.

The iPhone is pretty good but one of the things that bugged me was that I couldn’t use regular headphones with it. (sorry for the lousy photos but I wanted to get this out there)

As you can see, the iPhone jack on the left has a skinnier jacket than my old 5G (5th generation) iPod headphone. And as any iPhone owner has realized it pisses them off forcing them to either buy a 2nd iPhone headset or an adapter to use regular headphone jacks. That fat jacket prevents the normal plug from resting into the recessed iPhone socket. Apple claims it has to do with releasing the tension on the socket.

Well today I made a discovery. I was using my old iPod headphones in my laptop listening to some Led Zep and when I pulled the headphone out of the plug the jacket came off. Normally this would be bad but I noticed that the inside plastic insulator was skinny, kind of like the iPhone jack.

So I plugged it into the iPhone and it was a perfect fit!

I then put a little dab of glue onto the butt of the insulator and slipped the jacket back on. Probably a tiny dab of hot glue gun glue would work or some epoxy glue on the butt end of the insulator, you don’t want too much to make a mess.

I carefully gripped the jack and took it out of the iPhone to let the glue dry. I WOULD STRONGLY SUGGEST NOT USING SOMETHING LIKE SUPERGLUE, THE FUMES CAN ETCH THE GLASS OF YOUR IPHONE!

Now compare the two jacks. The iPhone jack on the top and my old iPod jack on the bottom. I can still use the iPod jack in all my devices but now it also works in the iPhone! The Belkin headphone adapter is $9.95, a 2nd headset from Apple would be $29.

I don’t know if the current generation of iPod headphone jacks can be pulled apart for this mod but maybe it’s worth a $9.95 try? Like the Belkin adapter sold in the Apple Store the iPod plug only has 3 electrical connectors since those headphones don’t have a microphone.