Apple Patent Hints at Slimmer iPhone Future

Apple has filed an interesting patent that suggests they could be looking at using the regular 3.5mm and 2.5mm headphone/headset jacks, but also hints that the connection port could one day be thicker than the device its self.

The iPhone 4 measures 9.3mm in thickness and the new iPad 2 measures 8.8mm. Both of these form factors can easily fit a 3.5mm headphone jack. The problem will come in the future though as Apple find ways to slim down the next generation devices. At some point, they will get close to or slimmer than 3.5mm and when that happens, you’d think that they would just use a proprietary connection rather than standard.

This particular patent actually hints at still using the same connection. As seen below, there are three options. Left shows the cut out (not Apple style), the second shows a rounded cover (probably not Apple style, and the third shows some funky doors that appear to open when the jack slides in. Again, neither seem to look like the way Apple would approach this. Instead, we think they’ll just choose to go to their own connector and perhaps supply an adapter for those that want one… aka, charge an arm and a leg for it.

We don’t expect to see this in play for the next iPhone or iPad, but the iPod nano and others are getting very slim and could well be using something like this in the coming year.

Source: TheRegister