Apple stops including headphone jack adapter with iPhone 8/7/XS/XR

You must have read news stories last month that said Apple won’t include free headphone dongle with its latest iPhone XS series smartphones as well as some older iPhones. Well, this has started happening.

Someone who claims to be a Verizon employee took to Reddit to inform that the new iPhone 8 packaging doesn’t include free Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter. Here’s what they said:

I check the packaging and it now no longer mentions the adapter on the what’s in the box section. Looks like if you buy an 8/8+ you will no longer get the dongle. Kinda jerk move to remove something out of the box a year later, but figured prospective buyers should know

As the post says, the iPhone 7 series also doesn’t come with free dongle anymore. And that’s true – you can check the In the Box section on the official listing page here.

This means no iPhones now come with headphone adapter out of the box. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t have one – Apple is selling the accessory separately for $9.

So, for something that was otherwise free so far, you’ll have to shell out $9 from now on. I know it doesn’t feel good, but that’s how it is.

This step from Apple is definitely a big boost in smartphone companies’ ongoing effort to push consumers towards wireless audio. Technically speaking, it creates more space inside phones that can be used to integrate cutting edge technologies like under screen fingerprint scanner.

It would be interesting to see how things shape up from now on.

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.