This strategy will work but will eventually require me to stop receiving os/security updates which is a real problem.
I finally got my mom an iPhone 7 and took her iPhone SE. I use the iPhone SE with a hotspot off the iPhone 7 and listen and charge it at the same time. I pick up the phone and I admire it every time. Its just the perfect machine. Almost reminds me of the last non-touchbar MacBook Pro. It’s like beating a dead horse at this point, but looking at how they went from the SE form factor to the 7, I always say to myself “what were they thinking?”. Maybe we’ve come to expect too much from Apple. They have been making life easy for a while but when they go the other way, I think the criticism is warranted.
It's been over 4 years, and there are literally hundreds* of ways you can accomplish this. That you have chosen to not spend $30 to fix something that apparently causes you such great distress, and instead choose to carry anger over it is kinda curious to me.
I even use Air Pods while it charges wireless at times, all depending on how much mobility I need at the time.
Pinnacle of industrial design. Even the bottom speaker holes are symmetrical.