What a Lightning to 30-pin Adapter Used for?

Since September 2012, Apple’s Lightning connector has been the smaller replacement for the 30-Pin Dock Connector introduced in 2003 -- a reliable plug that has been used in thousands of Apple-specific accessories, including everything from chargers to speakers, video projectors, and blood pressure monitors. Unfortunately, that means any accessories or cables you have that use the 30-pin connector won't fit.

However, the lightning to 30-pin adapter lets you adapt your older gear. According to Apple's site, the adapter will support analog audio output, USB audio, as well as syncing and charging. Video output is not supported, however, and not all 30-pin devices will be supported, either, so you may still need buy new accessories to use with the iPhone 5 and 2012 iPods.

You may disappointed that the lightning to 30-pin adapter only wors for audio, and not video. We tried the adaptor with a 30-pin to HDMI Adaptor and got the “This accessory is not designed for this iPhone” message. Sometimes this is displayed while the video plays, but in this case there is no video (it just continues to play on the iPhone screen as normal). We also tested it with a monitor with a 30-pin dock built-in, so it’s not a compatibilty issue the the HDMI adaptor – there’s simply no way to  get video from it.

Thus, you should keep in mind that lightning to 30-pin adapter will not send video from 30-pin connector to a lightning connector. You also should note that with some very old accessories made for the iPod, charging is not supported because that device used Firewire charging and this adapter only support USB charging. Besides, if you have an accessory that supports the special iPod-out mode in which the iPhone generated a menu that was displayed on a device such as a car, that also doesn’t work with this adapter.