Partners making gear for iPhone 5’s new dock announced

As expected, Apple has designed a new, smaller dock connector to replace the 30-pin one used on old iPhones and iPods. Called Lightning, it’s 80 percent smaller, fully digital and can plug in either way.

Don’t worry too much if you own a speaker dock or other peripheral with the old connector though: Apple is creating “a bunch of accessories to help you with that”. The adapter shown looks to be around an inch long; no price was mentioned.

Meanwhile, a host of third party manufacturers have been beavering away on hardware to support the Lightning dock: these include Bose, JBL, Bowers & Wilkins, Bang & Olufsen, all audio companies – so expect a new raft of speaker docks to be announced in the coming weeks.

Read our full iPhone 5 review.