iOS 10.3.1 killed my use of 3rd Party Lightening Charger/Audio dongle

Hi

When using electronic accessories with your iPhone, ensure that they are either genuine Apple products or that they have been certified as Made for iPhone under the MFi program. Certified items come with the "Made for iPhone" logo on them and/or on their packaging.

Using uncertified or counterfeit accessories may damage your iPhone and/or adversely affect operation. Apple's warranty does not cover damage caused by use with a third party product that does not meet Apple's specifications.

More information:

About iPhone, iPad, and iPod accessories - Apple Support

Identify counterfeit or uncertified Lightning connector accessories - Apple Support

What are you? CFO of Apple?? I've read several of your "answers" to people who've simply had questions about why their adapters suddenly stop working. Forget this "don't buy cheap" stuff. I have a VERY high quality, beautifully designed and built adapter for my "non-Apple" headphones that allowed me charge/listen until APPLE BROKE THE ADAPTERS with iOS 10.3.

It's not about "warranty" issues, it's about MONEY issues. Apple has done this before. They create a problem (can't charge and listen with regular headphones) then they do NOT provide a solution at first. When the aftermarket begins to fill in the gaps they go to an "accepted" manufacturer and start selling an expensive, and in the case of Belkin, not a very high quality, product.

Of course, they do now have a $150 "solution" by buying their AirPods. Admittedly, they are a great solution, but why should I have to put away my $400 studio quality earbuds so Apple can make another dollar after I've paid them $750 for a phone they build for about $150.

I LOVE my Apple products but creating problems, not providing immediate solutions, and then destroying property in the name of "warranty" issues without any warning seems to be their second best product line.

You may wish to consider the MFi-certified Belkin Lightning Audio + Charge Rockstar, which is available, for example, from the US Apple Online Store:

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKKP2ZM/A/belkin-lightning-audio-charge-rockst ar

I have tried to help you by offering an explanation and a solution for your issue.

You are not talking to Apple here - this is a user-based technical support community.

If you have an issue with an MFi-certified accessory being required (which ensures that it meets Apple's compatibility requirements), then you may wish to submit feedback to Apple, which you can do here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

If you wish to complain about Belkin's prices, then you may wish to contact Belkin, which you can do - for example - here:

http://twitter.com/belkincares

Burtamus wrote:

I updated to 10.3.1 last night, and now my 3rd party charger/audio dongle for my iPhone 6s Plus wont work. I get the "This accessory is not supported" popup on my phone.

Was this intentional? The dongle does not work on my wifes 7 either.

Anyone else with this issue?

No, but I never use 3rd party junk. Buy a real iPhone charger.

Good Morning Burtamus,

Unfortunately, this happened to me as well. Although I have read claims about third party adapters and cleaning the pins/connections, I truly believe that this was intentionally done to remove access to third party devices. Since this was a high quality third party charger / 3mm adapter Y connector, I have no cause to be suspect of its quality...especially since it was working flawlessly for months.

Everything worked fine one day, and after I updated, it worked for about a minute, then I get the error message that this device is not supported. I ordered another 3mm/charger Y connector, same thing happened. I connected my iphone 7 to my other car that had a Y connector that worked fine before the update, same thing happened after about minute.

In the end, I don't think apple will change anything. They're too big to care. I will purchase a BlueTooth headphones or BlueTooth 3mm adapter.

I miss Jobs... 😟

Burtamus wrote:

Its a charger/audio jack adapter. And like i said IT WAS FINE BEFORE THE UPDATES.

Senaky devs..

You shelled out $40 for the belkin one?

We are not talking about me.

It is perfectly normal, common you could say for things to work before they break

Hi Jonathon

Thanks for this. It seems helpful and close to what I want.
Apologies for my previous posts. I was not in any sense intending to criticize Apple policy.
I will merely say that if anyone is aware of an apple certified accessory, taking a lightning connector to a USB, plus a 3.5mm jack, ideally around 6 foot long. I would be very grateful for a link.

When all the dongle is doing is passing power and audio, seems like it shouldn't generate this error. There are no circuits, transformers or anything in the dongle. It's just allowing the phone to be charged and play audio at the same time, since with the 7 at least there is only 1 port choice.

I have the same problem after 10.3.1, even though my 7 Plus is attached to an MFi certified 12v power adapter in my car, as well as a 3.5mm cable to my car's stereo via the dongle. Worked great from release of the iPhone 7 until 10.3.1, and now it will play for about 2 minutes and then throw the error.

All solutions online are VERY temporary, so the move seems intentional to me. I'd gladly buy an Apple version of the same thing, but there isn't one...

Shouldn't make assumptions. I have a background in electronics and electrical work, and there is no reason for a dongle such as this to do anything but pass power via wire to specific pins on the lightning adapter, and same for audio. Unless Apple is making some sort of measurement of resistance, etc. on the wire and looking for variations outside of certain bounds, the fact that this happens when using an MFi certified charger, the part with the actual electrical circuits, it really shouldn't matter.

Again seems odd that worked just fine for months and then suddenly doesn't with an OS update. To me that says in the software they changed their criteria for how this is determined, or the logic used to determine what is an allowed device. Why was the exact same setup ok up until 10.3.1 and suddenly not?

Just an FYI for anyone else with this issue, I had cheap ones (2) that I bought on Amazon, the first one was crap so I ordered the 2nd and while I get the "not supported" message the thing still works so that's something at least. However, it distorts the music so I figured cheap product = cheap quality audio so I bit the bullet and paid the $40 for the Belkin Lightning Audio + Charge Rockstar AT THE APPLE STORE and it does not work after being plugged in... it teases you with about 30 seconds to a minute of working and then "This accessory is not supported by your phone" message comes up and when you hit OK it quits all together and I have to restart my phone to change over to the cheap one that has error message but still works. The thing has all of the specifications that it's supposed to, made for iPhone and all that but the stupid iOS 10.3 update killed it and now it won't work which is really frustrating because the quality for the 30-60 seconds it does work is great. I don't understand how Apple is selling this in their own stores as a supported product when it doesn't work. Now I apparently have to go back to the stupid Apple store and deal with that crowd so that I can return it and then I have nothing but the cheap adapter that might possibly damage my phone according to Apple. I am beyond disappointed in Apple because of this, who has the time for extra visits to the mall for a phone accessory and to make it worse I drive for Uber so this accessory is necessary to be able to do my job. Apple better fix this problem quickly or they will have an 11 year customer heading over to Samsung or some other phone that doesn't have these BS issues!

A bit of additional information on this, as noted the original cheap ( but perfect for my application) adapter was not MFi certified however the supplier has promised an updated replacement in a couple of weeks, I'll report back

I was also finding this problem on a couple of other charging cables since iOS 10.3, One of them was an Anker brand one that I paid a fair price for. I checked back to the paperwork and it is MFi approved. so it does seem, as with your Belkin one, that this update has also disabled a number of fully legitimate accessories.

There are two issues here:

1. If apple gain a public reputation for using updates to disable accessories on what appear to be purely anti-competitive grounds people will stop installing the updates. I'm actually surprised if this is legal in either the US or EU, its certainly pushing the boundaries.
2, If manufacturers who have signed up for the MFi program are having problems then the credibility of that will diminish.

I know that criticism of Apple is forbidden here, but getting their act together would seem to be a reasonable strategy.

Well, the problem is that Apple certified accessories either won't allow one to listen to music and charge the device at the same time or have a cheap and crappy D/A converter built into them (or both, like for example the original Apple adapter, which, on top of the above, is also flimsy and breaks after a couple of weeks).

Can anyone of you wise guys recommend me an Apple certified adapter that can charge and has decent sound quality? Thanks.

You are totally right. This is absolutely illegal. I reported Apple to the FCC by using software to disable third party accessories when other accessories are lower quality or unavailable. This is wrong and Apple should remove this software check in next update or they could face a hammer from the FCC if they think this is bad enough.

It would be one thing if Apple warns us something won't work and let's us do what we want. But actually disabling and blocking a product I bought for my phone is downright wrong. I've been with Apple for over 10 years. This is not making me want to stay.

Be interesting to see what reply you get, I really feel this is pushing legality to extremes, especially when they can't offer a sensible alternative ( in an earlier unapproved post I inquired if they expect me to upgrade my Mercedes to a newer model just to support the iPhone...) I can't claim 10 years, but have been using iPhones since the 3G, around 8 1/2 years, and, while I still vastly prefer it to android, the difference is less that it was.

To me this smacks of someone doing something 'because they can' I'd hope it will be at least partially reversed, especially as it seems to be affecting some MFi accessories as well as the unapproved ones.