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Lennyvalentin

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 25, 2011
1,431
794
Where I live, autumn has set in with colder, drying air, and the need for dressing more warmly.

I have a wind-proof jacket with an inner fleece liner which I use for when the climate is cooler, down to freezing or slightly below. This liner has a tendency for picking up static electricity when rubbing against my clothing, especially when taking it off. In the past with the analog earpods and my iPhone 5S, I've heard loud sparky pops in my ears if I've taken off the jacket and let the headphones cord get close to the fleece liner, but nothing more than that has happened.

Since buying an iPhone 7 and using it first with my old earphones and the lightning adapter, and then switching to native lightning pods, I've occasionally heard a single (typically fairly noticeable) pop, and then music playback would stop completely. Sometimes I would be able to restart playback with the in-line remote, but just as often I'd be forced to re-plug the connector to make the earphones work again. This quickly gets rather tedious, as sound might stop playing several times per minute at times.

Here's the weird bit tho: I had this exact same issue before I even started wearing this jacket, and using the analog to lightning adapter, typically when putting my phone back in the zippered pocket of my cotton sweater I like to wear when out and about. Cotton typically does not build up a whole lot of static electricity!

With my iPhone 7 at least, there's a single brief pop of static in the earphones every time the lightning plug is disconnected, very similar, if not outright identical to what I hear when music suddenly stops playing. I've been wondering if the problem has nothing to do with static at all, and instead is some sort of loose connection in my phone or lightning connector, but I can't seem to make the issue reproduce reliably when just jiggling the cord and connector. It has pretty much only happened when either putting my phone into my cotton sweater pocket (therefore possibly jiggling the connector in juust the right way to cause this), or when headphone cord has been in direct contact with the jacket fleece liner. Also, attaching charging cable and laying the phone flat on a surface works 100%, so if it's some sort of loose connection it only occurs when pressure is applied in some particular way.

Anyone else been having anything resembling these issues?

I'm planning on buying myself a set of airpods ASAP and get rid of tangly cords completely, but I still would want a fully working phone/lightning connector, if indeed that is the root cause of this...
 
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