Be wary of cheap wired Lightning headphones, because they might not work with your iPhone unless you actually pair them via Bluetooth.
Yes, it sounds confusing. But there are budget headphones you can currently buy off Lazada, Amazon, Shopee, and elsewhere that you can’t just plug into your phone and listen to music right away. They need you to connect via Bluetooth first for them to function properly. As to why manufacturers of knockoff electronics are following this peculiar trend, it all began with Apple removing the universal 3.5-mm headphone jack from its iPhones eight years ago.
With the headphone jack gone, the iPhones have since then necessitated the use of Bluetooth or the Lightning port (which Apple recently transitioned from to comply with the European Union’s standardization of USB Type-C as a common port). But for third-party manufacturers to be able to use Apple’s proprietary port for their products, they need to meet strict certification requirements and pay to be designated as genuine phone accessories. The cost is simply too much for some manufacturers, prompting them to find unconventional solutions.
And so here we are at this point in time when buying an old-school pair of wired earbuds carries a chance of being bamboozled by cheap knockoffs that require constant Bluetooth usage. For manufacturers, it’s a clever workaround to avoid Apple’s licensing fee. For consumers, it’s outright deceptive. It’s best to stay away from these cheap earbuds anyway; besides their counterintuitive mechanism, they also tend to have poor build and audio quality.
Via: Wired