One of the most talked-about changes in the iPhone 7 is its lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Inside the box, you no longer get a pair of 3.5mm EarPods. Instead, you get a pair of Lightning EarPods, as well as a Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter, which will allow you to continue using your analog headphones.
But, there’s a catch. If you want to listen to your wired headphones — even the new Lightning EarPods — and your phone is in need of a charge, you’ll need to buy an extra adapter or go wireless.
Here are some of the options for listening with headphones as you charge your iPhone 7.
![iphone-lightning-dock.jpg](https://www.cnet.com/a/img/resize/7f763055b522cca16c3bd07fd26a4597600e803e/hub/2016/09/08/b4d2561d-0cd2-42e0-9077-972e2748afe1/iphone-lightning-dock.jpg?auto=webp&width=644)
Apple.com
Apple’s Lighting Dock. Apple sells an iPhone Lightning Dock. It’s $49 (£49, AU$75), and it holds the iPhone upright with nothing more than a rigid Lightning connection. It has a Lightning port on the back for its power supply and flanking that port is a 3.5mm jack. Presumably, this is geared more toward running a 3.5mm cable from the dock to a sound system, but it could work as a work-around solution for jamming out with analog headphones while charging. That said, it isn’t going to be pretty.
Apple AirPods wireless earphones
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Belkin’s adapter. Third-party accessory maker Belkin has created the Lightning Audio + Charge RockStar adapter, which allows passthrough charging via Lightning while also listening to Lightning-compatible headphones. However, it isn’t cheap either. It’s $40 (£30.07 or AU$52.32), and if you want to listen to 3.5mm headphones, you will still need use a second adapter — the one included with the iPhone.
Bluetooth headphones. In the end, you might decide to invest in a pair of Bluetooth headphones, which start for around $20 (£15.05 or AU$26.18) online. But they quickly go up in price, especially if you want quality Bluetooth headphones. The cheapest ones on Apple’s website are $100 (around £75 or AU$130), and only go up from there.
No matter how you cut it, some of the workarounds are unsightly, and all of them will cost a fair amount of money to accomplish something that was quite simple before.