No, drilling into your iPhone 7 won’t give you a headphone jack

It was meant as a joke.

A YouTube account called TechRax posted a video purportedly explaining how to get a headphone jack in the new iPhone 7, which controversially does not have such a thing. Instead, you either have to use an adapter for the usual headphones that comes with the phone and plugs into the lightning port, or buy wireless Airpods for about $160 when they become available in October.

But, the video said, you can just take a drill to the phone and voila! Instant headphone jack.

Only it doesn’t work quite like that. In fact, it doesn’t work at all. And if you try it, your phone will probably not work at all.

“I followed all the steps you said and it won’t even turn back on,” wrote user adambsk8 in the comments to the video. “do I gotta update it or download the headphone jack app?”

It’s not clear if adambsk8 too was joking or not – the thread goes on so long that it’s hard to believe he really tried it. But Taras Maksimuk, the person behind TechRax, who tweets as @TechRax, says some people did believe it. A tweet posted Sept. 24 said, “Legit people complaining to me about them drilling the iPhone 7 for a headphone jack.”

The British newspaper Daily Mail and USA Today both quote examples of people who appear to have attempted the “hack,” much to their regret. “I really commit the biggest mistake of my life by watching this video,” YouTube user James Ceja wrote.

If you go to TechRax’s main page, you will see links to videos with titles such as “Can the iPhone 7 survive in Liquid Nitrogen for 5 minutes?” and “Will an iPhone 7 Survive in Coca-Cola Freeze Test for 12 Hours?” Oh, and there’s “Taking a Bath in a Giant 1,500 Gallon Coca-Cola Swimming Pool,” which has more than 42 million views. For that matter, the headphone jack video has more than 11.6 million views as of Tuesday evening.

The Daily Mail points out that most of those people didn’t fall for the prank. Some of the YouTube commenters had fun with it. One, who goes by Toxic Predator on YouTube, wrote, “I drilled a hole in my iPhone 7 and it worked! ALSO!!!!! if you throw your phone off into the grand canyon and the put a jack-hammer to it it gives you unlimited apps for free and unlimited memory! ALSO ANOTHER HACK!!!!!!!!!! if you throw it into a volcano it will print money!!!”

But those who did take the video seriously were left with a “bricked” phone – as in a phone that is about as useful as a brick. One person apparently messaged Maksimuk, “You idiot people said you was trustworthy and I drilled a hole in my brand new iPhone 7+ 256gb,” which ruined it (only he used an obscene four-letter word instead). After pointing out that his top-of-the-line phone cost more than 900 British pounds, or close to $1,200, he added, “AppleCare doesn’t even cover that. thanks a lot.”

Those who complain about ruining their phones are not likely to get much sympathy. One Twitter user, @imstillkieran, commented: “I wanna blame @TechRax for this so much but honestly these people really needed this lesson”

This story was originally published September 27, 2016 at 8:00 PM with the headline "No, drilling into your iPhone 7 won’t give you a headphone jack."