HiJacking the iPhone's Headset Port

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Michigan describe how to hijack the iPhone's headset port to power peripherals, establish bi-directional communications with them, and interface various sensors, all without jailbreaking your iPhone or having to pay thousands to access to the Apple Dock Connector. This makes it possible for students, hackers, and DIYers to extend the phone's functionality to the physical world. The team is giving away 20 HiJack modules/programmers to enable new apps."

Question:

[Pojut]

Could you rig up something similar to Android's "back" button with this? The lack of a back button and the lack of the notification pull-down are the major things that would ever prevent me from getting an iPhone...

Re:Question:

[Kadagan AU]

So you want to have a 1 cubic inch device hanging out of your headphone jack with a "back" button on it? Seems like it would be a pain in the ass, and make it more difficult to store your phone in your pocket or holster or wherever you like to carry it.. Or keeping the device in your pocket and only inserting it when you need to hit "back" is also tedious.

AKA a modem

[mrnick]

Who would have ever thought you could hook a phone up to a modem? OMG! LOL