New EarPods equipped with a Lightning connector have appeared on video again ahead of the iPhone 7’s launch this fall. Their design is slightly different to that of previous leaks we’ve seen, leading us to believe these ones could be real.
It’s still unclear whether Apple will actually give us new Lightning EarPods with the iPhone 7, or whether we’ll get Lightning adapters that allow us to plug in traditional 3.5mm jacks instead.
Recent leaks have promised us the new EarPods, but they’ve all been very questionable. The rounded Lightning connectors seen on each one don’t follow Apple’s traditional design guidelines, suggesting they’re little more than third-party fakes.
But these ones, shown off in the video below from British retailer MobileFun, look almost identical to Apple’s official EarPods that ship with every iPhone today. They have the same connector design, and the same inline remote.
Eagle-eyed readers will also notice that the white plastic used for that Lightning connector is exactly the same shade of white as the EarPods themselves. This hasn’t been the case with previous leaks — another reason why we suspected they were fake.
These could still be third-party fakes, of course — only much more convincing ones. We’ll have to wait until Apple makes the iPhone 7 official this fall to find out how it plans to get around that missing headphone jack.
According to a recent Forbes report, Apple will instead focus on wireless solutions. The company has reportedly designed its very own low-power Bluetooth chip that’s specially created for wireless headphones.
