Apple replaced the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 with a fake speaker grill

Advertisement

iPhone 7 no headphone jack

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus went on sale around the world on Friday.

Advertisement

That means some people have started to buy the phones only to immediately disassemble them, like the team at iFixit did early on Friday morning.

They bought an iPhone 7 Plus in Australia, as soon as it went on sale, and started taking it apart. And their teardown reveals what's in place of the headphone jack that Apple removed.

Complimentary Tech Event
Transform talent with learning that works
Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

In short: nothing complicated, just some plastic. No speaker, and no electronics.

"In place of the headphone jack, we find a component that seems to channel sound from outside the phone into the microphone... or from the Taptic Engine out," they write.

Advertisement

Yep - in the place where the headphone jack used to be there's a piece of molded plastic. "No fancy electronics here, just some well-designed acoustics and molded plastic," iFixit writes.

See for yourself:

Here's what was there last year, in the iPhone 6S, courtesy of iFixit (which also writes the best iPhone repair guides.)

Advertisement

That's not to say the space freed up by the headphone jack is wasted. Apple could have used some of that space elsewhere, especially to put the "Taptic Engine," or one of the phone's vibrating motors, closer to the new home button.

"That jack takes up a lot of space in the phone, a lot of space. And there's a lot of more important things we can provide for the consumer than that jack," Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this week.

If you're interested in the guts of your new iPhone 7, make sure to look through iFixit's entire teardown.

NOW WATCH: The 5 biggest changes coming to everyone's iPhone