Miffed that you don’t have a headphone jack on your new iPhone 7?
Don’t want to use the adapter that comes in the box?
Don’t want to spend $159 for Apple’s new wireless earbuds?
Well, good news! There’s a “secret hack” that’s gone viral on YouTube.
First, you get a drill with a 3.5mm bit. Then, you clamp your phone into a vise. Next, you…
GO LOCK YOURSELF IN A CLOSET UNTIL YOU COME TO YOUR SENSES!!!!
Please promise not to drill a hole into your $649 palm warmer, as the jokester “TechRax” advises you to do – and at least apparently does – to some hapless, screen freaking-out, panicky iPhone in this video:
That video had over 10 million views as of Monday morning, along with over 30,000 comments.
That would be fine were the comment section only full of contributions from people who got the (very expensive for those who fall for it) joke.
But no, there are, of course, a selection of comments from the very alarmed, newly wiser, and suddenly phoneless, including:
I tried this and ended up with display destruction and it not working… I really committed the biggest mistake of my life by watching this video.
Yes, you did. You’ve been victimized by a very cruel joke. But you’re not alone.
Another:
A friend of mine told me it worked for him, but my iPhone won’t turn on after I drilled the hole for the jack.
I checked and it was the 3.5mm drill, so I made no mistake there! What happened? Any of you have the same problem?
Another commenter, thankfully, didn’t have a vise and hopefully learned his lesson before he went out and got one:
Ok I am sure it’s in the comments somewhere but my friend told me to ask what size drill bit am I supposed to use?
Also I don’t have that clamp thingy, can I or my friend hold it while we drill? I don’t want to ruin my phone.
Thanks for all the help guys…
Of course, all these “oh woe is me” purportedly hole-drilling commenters themselves could be, in the words of the ever-wise Gollum, sneaky little Hobbitses, wicked, tricksy, false!
A lot of commenters are also stretching out the joke, and compounding the meanness of it, by pretending this “hack” – more accurately known as “device murder” – actually works.
Since some people are still having issues, a bit of advice. The guy seems to have missed the part about cleaning the phone after drilling.
In order to clean out the 3.5mm socket of debris from the drill you need to soak the phone in soapy water for around 15 minutes so all the drill shavings are loosened.
Then give the phone a shake once you’re done. Hope this helps someone :)
Or this guy, who added a fictional tech explanation with words like “internal components” sprinkled in there to give him the cred he so doesn’t deserve:
THIS WORKS. The reason this works is because the iPhone 7 actually has the internal components of the headphone jack (the contacts) built inside. Apple only removed the outer part of the jack for cosmetic reasons. There are reports of people damaging their phones, which means they did it wrong. You have to use the correct size drill bit and you have to drill in exactly the location TechRax shows in the video to avoid damaging the jack inside the phone.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Mean. Bad YouTube commenters, bad! Bad!
There’s obviously very good reason why Google recently asked for volunteers to help it drain the persistent swamp of toxic comments on YouTube.
Since it first came onto the scene, the iPhone has been the subject of tons of hilarious – and/or nasty – pranks.
Now is as good a time as any to remind people that no, you can’t charge your iPhone in the microwave.
Updating to iOS 7 wouldn’t have waterproofed your iPhone, no matter what an extremely convincing looking ad said in 2013.
Bending your iPhone might have well been possible, but was it advisable?
Want to listen to your new iPhone with your beloved earbuds?
There’s an adapter in the box with iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. It’s free, in other words. If you lose it, you can buy another for $9.
Just put down the drill, and back away, nice and slow…
And please don’t encourage others to do any hole drilling!
Image courtesy of TechRax / YouTube
Tom
Are you sure that drilling a hole in your iPhone 7 won’t magically create an audio port?
Anonymous
If you need a headphone jack (and most of us do) don’t buy an iPhone 7!
Anonymous
That’s hilarious. If you take a drill to your brand new iPhone you kinda deserve whatever happens to you.
Robert R Harper II
It blows my mind that any of these halfwitts that have done this to their little status symbol are and or do have the ability to be employed by any company to 1pay such a stupid outragious price for somthing that by next year will be replaced and given away by local phone stores for changing over to another service. You guys ride in duh short bus and if your guilty of both counts of duh umm STUPID! U get duah short bus too , helmet to be worn at all times to protect your soft and undeveloped skulls . 😁😅😆
snarkly
Trump supporters , every one.of them!
James Hartsf
Hillary supporters , every last one of them
Steabt
But have you ever heard of trolls? On YouTube maybe? :)
C. Mike Hunt
“… please don’t encourage others to do any hole drilling!”
Unless, of course, you don’t like them.
Mahhn
LOL but sadly it explains a lot about people.
Brett
*vise
Paul
No one cares
Nicholas Orr
It would be impossible to know which comments are playing along and not being serious though… This article could have been a bit more fun with the requisite “disclaimer” at the end. Oh well.
Now where is my 3.5I’m drill bit, I’m so sick of carrying that adapter…
Lisa Vaas
You are absolutely right! It occurred to me last night that I neglected to mention that. Add now. Thanks!
Person
Some people apparently get sadistic pleasure by creating chaos for others.
Sure, blame the victim(s). The perps walk and go on to create more chaos.
Steve
Really! Are people in this world that stupid?
If you are that stupid you don’t deserve to own a phone more or less should you own a home or a car.
mrspiff
I’m ashamed for human kind that this has to be explained…
Mike
But … but … power tools!
So shiny! So chrome!
Dan
The future is made of chrome.
Ken
Don’t worry. You can plug that hole in your device with a firewall :)
Isn’t that what firewalls do – close open ports?
MrGutts
Can we remove the voting rights for all the idiots that did do this?
Tim
I was joking with my brother a few weeks ago that this would be a hilarious internet rumor to start, just to see how many people we could get to invalidate their warranties… and then the infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of video cameras that is YouTube went ahead and produced it…
Yes, the sick sense of humor runs in the family.
J. Fox
Why is this even a thing?
Is this the level of stupidity we have reached?
Yeah, it’s funny yet alarming people are actually doing this.
Kacee Cooley
A perfect example of why I think warning labels should be banned….. we need to allow natural selection to serve its function unhindered so society can benifit overall!
Todd
Well Said Kacee……Trial Lawyers and OSHA ruined natural selection.
BotherSaidDocBrown
If its any consolation I did *accidentally* discover that the “Earpods” are actually standard Bluetooth headphones (albeit BLE) inside. The trick is to find an old earpiece with a 24C0x (mine was 04) e2prom and read it back on an old junk laptop with DDR or DDR2 by using a “dummy” identical memory module with the chip taken out. If you do it right its possible using Serial Presence Detect to add the correct range so the iPhone then correctly recognizes it as the legitimate Earpod. It will probably work, unfortunately am up to my ears in repairs at the moment. You can also “hack” people’s Earpods this way if you have access to the box they came in as oh-so-helpfully Apple printed the Bluetooth address on the box! Pwn3d!!!