Author Topic: Aging Airpods...  (Read 13834 times)

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Offline rsjsouzaTopic starter

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Aging Airpods...
« on: March 25, 2019, 08:49:31 pm »
I guess the general public did not expect that such tiny batteries on an expensive accessory would have a finite lifespan.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/your-airpods-probably-have-terrible-battery-life/585439/
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Offline apis

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2019, 09:16:00 pm »
Well, yeah. All these devices with non replaceable batteries bother me. My laptop battery died a while ago (after only a couple of years) and it wasn't possible to get a replacement. The battery pack contained a TI bq3060 with SHA-1 Authentication. According to the datasheet "battery counterfeiting is a major problem confronting original equipment manufacturers (OEM) today."  ::) So the laptop basically expired after only two years. :rant:
 

Offline rsjsouzaTopic starter

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2019, 02:31:44 am »
Well, yeah. All these devices with non replaceable batteries bother me. My laptop battery died a while ago (after only a couple of years) and it wasn't possible to get a replacement. The battery pack contained a TI bq3060 with SHA-1 Authentication. According to the datasheet "battery counterfeiting is a major problem confronting original equipment manufacturers (OEM) today."  ::) So the laptop basically expired after only two years. :rant:
Wow, that sucks. I have never heard about such authentication scheme for batteries - the printer companies try, but they are always being outflanked by third parties. Perhaps the market for batteries is smaller.
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Offline james_s

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2019, 03:18:18 am »
Why anyone would buy those ridiculous looking Airpods has always been a mystery to me. There are countless bluetooth headphones out there that work at least as well, run much longer on a charge and cost a lot less. As an added bonus they don't look goofy.
 
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Offline rdl

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #4 on: March 26, 2019, 04:16:42 am »
Non-replaceable batteries are stupid and should be illegal.
 
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Offline Psi

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #5 on: March 26, 2019, 04:39:05 am »
Buying an Apple product removes your right to complain that it's not repairable. You purchased a non-repairable device.
my 2 c
« Last Edit: March 26, 2019, 04:42:26 am by Psi »
Greek letter 'Psi' (not Pounds per Square Inch)
 
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Offline Halcyon

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #6 on: March 26, 2019, 04:49:03 am »
Buying an Apple product removes your right to complain that it's not repairable. You purchased a non-repairable device.
my 2 c

I'll add to that -- By buying an Apple product, you also acknowledge that it has a finite lifespan and you should expect it to fail sooner than you think.
 

Offline daqq

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #7 on: March 26, 2019, 09:10:44 am »
Believe it or not, pointy haired people do exist!
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Offline bd139

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #8 on: March 26, 2019, 10:12:00 am »
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2019, 10:30:15 am »
A big question I haven’t seen addressed by anyone yet is what Apple charges for out-of-warranty replacement/repair of AirPods with worn out batteries. In an iPhone, for example, they charge about $80 for this, a far cry from the cost of a new phone. (And yes, this is often an actual phone replacement, if the battery replacement is considered too hazardous to perform in-store, like when a battery is bulging.) I have a suspicion that the cost is reasonable and that this a ton of ado about nothing.

Non-replaceable batteries are stupid and should be illegal.
Battery compartments and covers add significant physical size, so omitting them is a reasonable design decision. And battery compartments make tight waterproofing much harder to do.

Why anyone would buy those ridiculous looking Airpods has always been a mystery to me. There are countless bluetooth headphones out there that work at least as well, run much longer on a charge and cost a lot less. As an added bonus they don't look goofy.
You think wearing big headphones out on the street looks more goofy than AirPods?  :o

Sounds like sour grapes to me...

I don’t have AirPods because I like in-ear buds that have strong passive isolation. But the fact is, everyone I know who’s bough AirPods loves them: according to them, they sound good, work as described, stay in well (surprisingly), are comfortable and lightweight, and eliminate cords.

And no, other Bluetooth headphones don’t work “as well”, in that Apple’s proprietary Bluetooth chip enables really nice features like easy pairing that is shared with all your devices via iCloud, such that you can seamlessly switch them between, for example, your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. (The only other Bluetooth earphones that use the Apple chip are ones from Beats, an Apple subsidiary.) They integrate into the iOS user interface in ways unseen on any other Bluetooth earbuds. I’m not saying other ones are bad, but they simply do not have the tight integration and feature set of the AirPods.

I'll add to that -- By buying an Apple product, you also acknowledge that it has a finite lifespan and you should expect it to fail sooner than you think.
And yet, on average, last significantly longer than competing products...
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #10 on: March 26, 2019, 11:00:41 am »
I'm relatively rational when it comes to this stuff. I will never buy AirPods here even though I've got piles of Apple stuff in the house and like it. Why?

1. My sister has one AirPod. The other is in a hedge somewhere.
2. Wires stop one of them falling down the toilet. They're like the chain on the pens in the bank. It's a feature.
3. They're really expensive. I don't mind paying money for something that lasts but for me that's the pair of Sennheiser HD25's I've had for nearly 20 years.
4. More things that need charging and more battery anxiety.
5. It's clear they are disposable. Same as the Apple watch. Smaller the item, the higher the integration.

To note, I don't know why people complain that Apple products are not repairable. They are. I've repaired many Apple devices over the years with no problems at all. I've got Apple to repair them. But with all things, that only works down to a certain integration level.

And on the recycling front, if you walk into an Apple Store these days they will give you credit for stuff you return and will recycle it themselves.

Plus, read this: https://www.apple.com/euro/environment/pdf/g/generic/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2018.pdf

But again with all this, I won't buy AirPods.
 
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Offline madires

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #11 on: March 26, 2019, 11:19:37 am »
overpriced product + planned obsolescence = even more profit
 

Offline madires

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #12 on: March 26, 2019, 11:20:45 am »
And on the recycling front, if you walk into an Apple Store these days they will give you credit for stuff you return and will recycle it themselves.

Plus, read this: https://www.apple.com/euro/environment/pdf/g/generic/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2018.pdf

Apple Forces Recyclers to Shred All iPhones and MacBooks: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks
 
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Offline apis

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #13 on: March 26, 2019, 11:54:08 am »
Non-replaceable batteries are stupid and should be illegal.
Yes it should, it's such a waste. You shouldn't be allowed to make it harder to repair things or replace parts.
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #14 on: March 26, 2019, 12:03:40 pm »
Non-replaceable batteries are stupid and should be illegal.
Yes it should, it's such a waste. You shouldn't be allowed to make it harder to repair things or replace parts.

How do you make smaller, more efficent things without sacrificing repair?



And on the recycling front, if you walk into an Apple Store these days they will give you credit for stuff you return and will recycle it themselves.

Plus, read this: https://www.apple.com/euro/environment/pdf/g/generic/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2018.pdf

Apple Forces Recyclers to Shred All iPhones and MacBooks: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

Apple can't force anyone to do shit. This is the recyclers bending over. The reason they want to control the recycling is to keep all the frankendevices off the market which are a pile of shit to deal with even if you're a third party repairer. So you go in CEX here in the UK and buy an iPhone. Who knows what you get? Probably a write off with a trivial repair. Heard a lot of horror stories there.

Also they are aiming for closed loop manufacturing and device rental at some point in the future. I don't have a problem with that. They're selling convenience.

 
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Offline apis

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #15 on: March 26, 2019, 01:38:57 pm »
Non-replaceable batteries are stupid and should be illegal.
Yes it should, it's such a waste. You shouldn't be allowed to make it harder to repair things or replace parts.
How do you make smaller, more efficent things without sacrificing repair?
I don't think it would have been that hard to make batteries replaceable, just don't glue the case together. But I was thinking of things like having cryptographic authentication in things like laptop batteries to prevent them from being replaced when they fail.
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #16 on: March 26, 2019, 01:59:34 pm »
My laptop doesn't (Thinkpad T-series)

It does have a BMS that commits suicide if the batteries sit on the shelf for a few years though. Which I'm fine with as I got a nice 3s2p pack out of that one and got a free replacement.
 

Offline apis

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #17 on: March 26, 2019, 02:05:19 pm »
I was looking at a Thinkpad but the T-series is pretty pricey for private individuals.
 

Offline madires

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #18 on: March 26, 2019, 02:24:15 pm »
Apple Forces Recyclers to Shred All iPhones and MacBooks: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

Apple can't force anyone to do shit. This is the recyclers bending over. The reason they want to control the recycling is to keep all the frankendevices off the market which are a pile of shit to deal with even if you're a third party repairer. So you go in CEX here in the UK and buy an iPhone. Who knows what you get? Probably a write off with a trivial repair. Heard a lot of horror stories there.

But there also also repair shops like Louis Rossmann's. Do you have a car? Then you might know that there are good independent garages, as well as bad ones. Even several certified garages (certified by the car manufacturer) provide poor service. And there are also good certified ones. Would you like to be forced to get your car repaired or serviced only by a certified garage if you know a great independent one just around the corner?
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #19 on: March 26, 2019, 02:40:40 pm »
I was looking at a Thinkpad but the T-series is pretty pricey for private individuals.

Mine is 4 years old and cost me half the price of a bottom end pile of consumer crap. I have added an SSD, full HD display, extended battery to it and broken even on an HP netbook price.
 

Offline rdl

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #20 on: March 26, 2019, 03:17:46 pm »
I was looking at a Thinkpad but the T-series is pretty pricey for private individuals.

Have you considered used?

I've been looking off and on for a T-520 of some kind on ebay. If I actually needed a laptop, I probably would've bought one by now. I've seen some pretty good deals go by, even assuming I would probably want a new battery and possibly SSD and RAM upgrades.
 

Online CatalinaWOW

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #21 on: March 26, 2019, 03:44:44 pm »
I think you can thank the legal industry for these encrypted batteries.  It looks to me like protection from lawsuits over burning laptops.  A lawyer won't go after some corner shop that does battery replacement, there isn't any money there.  They go for the deep pockets.  So the original vendor does whatever they can to show they did due diligence in preventing problems.

 

Offline james_s

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #22 on: March 26, 2019, 04:49:47 pm »
That's exactly what it is. If someone uses a cheap aftermarket battery in their Lenovo laptop and it burns their house down they don't go after the random Chinese seller they got the battery from, they blame Lenovo. That said, I've got several T series Thinkpads with cheap aftermarket batteries and they work fine.
 
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Offline edy

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #23 on: March 26, 2019, 06:05:18 pm »
One should do a bit of research before buying any product to see if it is repairable and how easy it will be and how much it will cost them. There are tons of YouTube videos showing gadget teardowns... You can get an idea of how tough it will be and what's inside, what tools you need, etc.

Chances are though that most people buying Airpods or any device in general are not looking that far into the future. Let's face it...  the average consumer already expects and knows their phone, earphones, laptop, tablet are probably going to last about as long as the software on it is able to run their latest games or YouTube videos, or keep the OS updated to take advantage of the latest features, and then they toss it.

I just made the mistake of trying to fix an aging iPod Classic. Someone gave me their old iPod Classic 30gb and I managed to get it charged and running long enough to install RockBox on it. It was functioning fine for maybe 5-10 minutes when plugged in, but would soon lose power faster than it could charge, and would turn off until charged again for a while. When unplugging it from power, it would power on for maybe 5 seconds and then turn off. So it was time to order a replacement battery from eBay for $15.

Big mistake... I should have tried to open up the damn iPod first before shelling out another $15 for a battery. I looked at all the online videos, checked 10 times and read all the precautions, used a special prying kit, etc... and I've opened up many items before. This one decided to be stubborn. Many of the plastic tabs on the front shell holding the back on ended up ripping off, despite careful prying. I guess it was just so old that the plastic started to dry up and became way too brittle to bend out of the way.

Then, once I managed to get in, I tried to remove the battery which was glued to the case. There is a tiny flat-flex behind the battery which I KNEW was there before-hand by seeing videos... and DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY WARNED about damaging this flat-flex... guess what.... I ended up tearing it also.  |O  It is for the "hold" button, so you can live with out it, but still!!! It was running right under the freakin' glue that was holding down the battery!!!! WHY!!!

Anyways, at that point it still worked somewhat but then I noticed the stupid button (the iPod control wheel) in the middle had slipped out from it's spot and was loose and sliding out. So I had to remove the remaining board (which has the hard drive) from the other half of the case, and when I put it all back together the iPod refused to boot off the drive! It was complaining probably because the hard drive was damaged!

So anyways it turned into a disaster of epic proportions and now to try to salvage this mess I will have to order either another mini hard drive or one of those adapters (they have SD Card or Flash Drive adapter to fit the small hard drive flat-flex cable) and sink another $20-30 into it with the hopes it will work. Mind you, I will probably have to install iTunes and try to re-install all of that stuff on the drive as well to get it working again. I'm not sure I want to.

While this iPod classic *should* have been repairable, maybe 5 years ago it may have not been as brittle, I figure it a lost cause and now have spent $15 on a Li-Ion cell I can't do anything with. No big deal but lesson to be learned is open up the device FIRST before ordering a replacement battery.  :palm:
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Offline magic

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Re: Aging Airpods...
« Reply #24 on: March 26, 2019, 06:21:21 pm »
It looks to me like protection from lawsuits over burning laptops.
If someone uses a cheap aftermarket battery in their Lenovo laptop and it burns their house down they don't go after the random Chinese seller they got the battery from, they blame Lenovo.
That's so utterly absurd I can't believe it even after having heard about that idiot who sued McDonald's for hot coffee being hot.
Any links?
 


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