Nothing's confirmed, but there are an awful lot of rumors about no more 3.5 mm headphone socket on future iPhones. It's looking like a slam dunk, unfortunately. I'm fairly certain moedawg is right about there being a dongle you'll be able to buy (at the usual premium Apple prices!) so that your existing headphones will still work. I think what's really going to bug me is the keynote where Apple will tell us all how much better our audio is going to sound once we've replaced our existing headphones with the new, all-digital, high-bandwidth, extended frequency-response lightning-equipped Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. In various forums I've see many naive people already falling for that one. Since lightning is an Apple-proprietary device that requires manufacturers pay a license fee, it's hard to see this ever replacing the 3.5 mm plug & socket as the new standard, so this move is going to create a giant fractured mess. A bit like the current state of US politics.
I guess the options are:
1) Replace your SE846 with some Beats headphones that will come with a lightning plug.
2) Stick with your existing iPhone and never ever upgrade it. That'd probably work for a year or two...
If you need to occasionally use headphones with your phone (probably most of us do, even if our DAPs are our main audio source), then you could:
3) Buy the Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter/dongle for $39.99 and carry it with you everywhere.
4) Buy a different phone.
I know some people are really excited about losing the 3.5 mm socket, because the iPhone 7 can then be 0.001 mm thinner, which is obviously very important. Sure, the battery life might suffer a bit, but probably the battery already lasts a bit too long in the current iPhone anyway
I've recently been losing faith in Apple. I bought myself a Galaxy S7 Edge this week (never used Android before - I've owned every iPhone since the 3GS). It's early days and perhaps I'll eat humble pie and go running back to iOS at some point, but so far so good... I have no intention of buying the iPhone 7.
