Apple Is Working On Tinier Audio Jacks To Make iPods Even Smaller

[javajolt]

My Treo 700wx has a 2.5mm audio jack and I needed to buy a 2.5 to 3.0mm adapter since 2.5mm earplugs weren't available at the time.  No I have moved up to a Bluetooth Stereo Headset what a difference.

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Look at any of Apple’s newest iPods — the new Shuffle, the touchscreen nano, the iPod Touch — and you will find three devices as tiny, svelte or both as Cupertino can possibly make them. In fact, all of these devices are scarcely thicker at this point than the width of their widest single element —the 3.5mm audio jack — which means that if they are ever going to lose any more chunk, that audio jack is going to need to get even smaller.

It turns out that is exactly what Apple is currently working on, according to a recently filed patent. The new audio jacks uses deflectable “pogo pins”, instead of the usual cantilever beams which extend into a jack cavity and are pushed out of the way when your headphone plug is inserted, allowing audio and electricity to be transmitted.

“The contact mechanism for the audio jack only needs to extend in one direction (e.g., in one direction perpendicular to the axis of the cavity, or y),” the patent says. “This may allow an electronic device in which the electronic device housing follows the dimensions of the audio jack for around at least one half of the periphery of the audio jack (e.g., all of the audio jack conductive pads and the movement of the audio jack conductive pads remains in a plane that includes the central axis of the cavity).”

Of course, Apple’s new patent doesn’t actually change the dimensions of the actual audio jack cavity, but it does allow the size of an audio jack to be “greatly reduced in two dimensions,” according to the patent. I wonder if that’ll be good enough for Apple: given their obsession with small form factors, this train-of-thought could easily eventually end up in proprietary, pin-wide audio connectors.

[javajolt]

A newly-published patent application from Apple is generating some interest today for its description of a means to reduce the size of headphone jacks by using pogo pins instead of the traditional cantilevered metal strips for mediating electrical contacts with headphone plugs.

The invention disclosure comes as Apple continues to shrink the general overall size of its portable devices, with reducing thickness in particular being a focus for the company. As devices continue to shrink, certain physical features become limiting factors for further size reduction, as can be seen in the current iPod shuffle and iPod nano, where the thickness of the devices appears to be approaching the limits imposed by the need to accommodate the headphone jack.

Apple points to the current "cantilever beam" design for headphone jack contacts as requiring significant space in two dimensions to accommodate the contacts while also requiring sufficient length to ensure the necessary leverage to maintain contact with the headphone plug.

Switching from the cantilever beam to a series of spring-loaded pogo pins lined up along the side of the headphone jack could allow the jack to essentially require space in only a single dimension, allowing for thinner device designs.

The pogo pins can be positioned in the audio jack using any suitable orientation. In some embodiments, the pogo pins can be positioned in substantially a single plane such that the pogo pins require space in a single dimension of the audio jack assembly. The pogo pins can be oriented substantially orthogonal to the audio jack cavity (e.g., such that the deflectable tips extend orthogonally into the cavity), or at an angle relative to the cavity walls.

The patent application was filed in June 2009 based on a provisional patent application filed in March of that year and is credited to Apple engineers Sean Murphy and John DiFonzo.