Scotty Allen:

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.

Great self-interview. This is the guy who made his own iPhone 6s from scrounged parts. He’s open-sourced his design, if you are of a mind to do this yourself.

My favorite question:

Q: How much did it cost?

A: I haven’t kept perfect track, but I’ve spent easily thousands of dollars on this project. I’ve bought 3 iPhone 7s to take apart, a handful of new screens, several handfuls of backs I mutilated, and countless other parts I broke. I paid a factory to do 7 manufacturing runs of circuit boards. And oh god the headphone adapters. I bought lots and lots of official Apple headphone adapters to take apart.

Love it. Watch Scotty doing his magic in the video below.