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I imagine it may be hard and they don't have incentives to "fix it", but I think the single most important disadvantage of airpods is the battery life... no mat
by emmanueloga_ 5y ago
I imagine it may be hard and they don't have incentives to "fix it", but I think the single most important disadvantage of airpods is the battery life... no matter how long it lasts, there's no way to replace it, so they became essentially discardable items. [1]?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
- hk__2 5y agoThis has nothing to do with some evil planned obsolescence, it’s just that you can’t make a device that small while retaining (easy) battery replacement capability. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/your-wireless-earbuds-are-trash-eventually/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/your-wireless-earbud...
- MaKey 5y agoTurns out you can: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Teardown/135908 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Tea...
- rootusrootus 5y agoThose are huge, though. There's a trade-off.
- hk__2 5y agoThey have a 10-steps guide of "moderate" difficulty to replace the battery, and it may damage the water resistance of the buds. That’s definitely not what I’d call "easy" battery replacement. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Battery+Replacement/144851 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Batter...
- truculent 5y agoWell they had a choice to make it less small and repairable. But ultimately, they chose small and disposable. It may not be planned obsolescence, but it's still a choice made with a certain level of disregard for consumers.
- adwn 5y ago> [...] but it's still a choice made with a certain level of disregard for consumers. Yes, OR, they did regard their customers' preference for smaller headphones.
- Arn_Thor 5y agoI'd argue there's a difference between planned obsolescence and products that are of such a nature that it's just about impossible to pull them apart. (Now, whether that means the latter category of products is defensible is a different question)
- emmanueloga_ 5y agoEveryone in here is showing admiration for apple engineering ability so as i said, probably a difficult problem, but not impossible. I found this product [1] that's probably not as high quality as airpods but looks like a nice proof of concept actually :-) 1: https://pqearbuds.com/ https://pqearbuds.com/