Price any Apple hardware and you'll find they charge a pretty penny for larger memory capacity. In Apple's latest design iterations it is getting harder and harder to make upgrades, and upgrading iPhone memory or storage capacity has never been possible. You could say Apple's whole business model is predicated on charging a premium for memory and storage.

Apple really screwed up the iPhone design with the iPhone 7 by not putting in a headphone jack. I don't care about their prescriptive ideas about this, we need a headphone jack dammit. This video is from the guy who built his own iPhone from spare parts he bought in Shenzen China. For this video, he'd bought an iPhone 7 in order to record better videos and found himself really wanting a headphone jack. So, he decided to launch into adding such a jack, knowing there are millions of others around the world chafing at Apple's preconcieved notions and wanting a headphone jack on their iPhone 7.

The process took 17 weeks of trial and error. He started with noting there's an empty space where the headphone jack belongs, and that it'd be vaguely possible to add hardware into that space. What took the 17 weeks is designing a custom circuit, on a flexible substrate, learning to solder flexible circuits and work under a microscope, and to learn how to assemble the result without breaking the parts. That last bit was expensive due to the large number of expensive parts he broke. But, he came out the end with success and a vow to release the design files to the public via his website, and a strong plea to Apple to add a dang headphone jack to the iPhone 8.

Apple does not make an iPhone with internal wireless charging support. Scotty of Strange Parts found a guy in China who developed a kit to add wireless charging capability inside an iPhone 7. It is a slim circuit including Wireless Charging antenna and a connector which slips into an iPhone 7 connector. It requires replacing the back, so there is a port-hole through which wireless charging signals can get into the phone.

The video attached here is a fascinating look at not only getting into an iPhone 7 and making modifications, but the hardware development environment in the Chinese electronics markets. We get to see Scotty taking apart and reassembling an iPhone 7 several times, testing and debugging, and finally getting the thing to work. Plus, we get to see Scotty negotiating with Chinese hardware developers.

The big result is that Scotty is making available kits at http://strangeparts.com/wireless

Over the past few months a pair of mind-blowing videos have been made based in the parts markets in China. Scotty, the iPhone Guy, started with the question -- these markets have all kinds of spare parts for iPhones, but can you assemble enough of those parts to build your own iPhone. It took him a few weeks to accomplish the task, but he did so, and that phone works. For the second video, he wanted to add a headphone jack to the iPhone 7, which ended up as a grindingly difficult project that took 17 weeks to finish. But, it works. The question is whether Scotty will only do iPhone projects, what's his motivation, is he going to do more work like this, and so on.

He has a broader plan in mind, to explore other technology hubs, to explore the technology supply chain, and so on. We can expect his work to have great technical depth, going into literal nuts and bolts.

This video is an interview with Scotty as they walk through the building housing those electronics markets.

A couple months ago an amazing video popped up on YouTube, a guy had built his own iPhone from spare parts. He followed that up with another video about hacking an iPhone 7 to have a headphone jack. As a result, Scotty (his name) has been getting lots of questions about whether building your own iPhone is the cheapest way to get a new iPhone. His answer, "No", falls in line with my observation on the cheapest way to get an iPhone X, Apple's newest iPhone that goes on sale today for over $1000 apiece.

Apple is playing a game on us all. They've learned how to make us lust after the latest gizmo, and how to make us think a 2-3 year old phone is worthless. Apple has one of the largest Market Cap's in history by playing that game. However, we can play that game a different way and save ourselves a ton of money.

Scotty of Strange Parts has published several in-depth videos on building an iPhone, and building custom iPhones including adding a headphone jack to an iPhone 7. In this video he walks us through the parts required to build an iPhone from parts. This is not just the logic board, screen, battery, and case, but all the parts, as well as hints on which parts to be extra careful aboutl