Charge your iPhone 7 and use wired 3.5mm 'phones at the same time. Maybe.

Now you can charge your iPhone 7/Plus and use your beloved 3.5mm adapter-having analog-audio-interfaced device at the same time. Maybe. If you're someone who still needs to do that.

📷 from the Kickstarter campaign.

This campaign is from a first-time Kickstarter creator named Auxillite, but I'm guessing at least some of their team members have prior Kickstarter experience. In short, the product is a T-shaped adapter that plugs into the Lighting port of an iPhone. From there, you can plugin in a lightning cable on one side and a 3.5 mm audio plug on the other. Both ports on the adapter work at the same time, so indeed you can charge and listed to music at the same time.

Obviously, this is designed for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus owners, but it would work on any iPhone 5 or iPad 4 or newer I assume, should you be so oddly inclined.

The Kickstarter campaign looks solid and the design seems sound, but I am rather curious about MFi certification. They say they have or will applied to it if you read the campaign comments, but I have a feeling this is going to get denied. If MFi would allow adapters like this, Belkin/Anker/Aukey/JBL/everyone would have made said adapters available at launch. Instead all we got was the dual lighting adapter from Belkin (at $40 even!).

This adapter does indeed have it's own DAC, as opposed to using the iPhone's DAC were that even possible. Auxillite is quoting a 16-bit DAC with 44.1kHz/48kHz sampling frequency and 5Hz-50,000Hz frequency range at 16 ohms. There are a number of comments on the campaign page about making a 24-bit DAC available. That's what they should have used in the first place, even though it really doesn't matter at all (but in service of the "audiophiles"...) and hopefully the campaign will be successful enough, and their part orders large enough, that they can upgrade all of them to 24-bit.

I'm definitely going to back this campaign for $1 to keep an eye on it, not because I need one of these adapters ever but because I want one. If they release more info about the MFi certification and the implications of being denied, I'll make my decision on whether to back all the way or not.

Source: Kickstarter via 9to5toys