General > General Technical Chat
Aging Airpods...
NiHaoMike:
--- Quote from: edy on March 27, 2019, 03:05:54 am ---How many smartwatches out there have now glued in batteries that you charge daily/weekly? How easy is it to change them?
--- End quote ---
I have a Galaxy Gear that's 5 years old, still on the original battery, although replacing it would be trivial. I only charge it up to about 80% to extend the lifetime just as is done for EVs.
0culus:
--- Quote from: edy on March 27, 2019, 03:05:54 am ---Let's face it, Apple has no interest whatsoever in designing their products to be repairable. They want their products to look stylish, it is all about design. If the best design means no externally visible screws, extremely compact design, curved white plastic bodies, thinness, that is what they will do. It hasn't hurt their bottom line... and other manufacturers are following suit.
If companies gain market share and profitability BECAUSE they make their devices easier to repair, other companies will do the same. But as we have seen, Apple has proven that nobody cares about repair as people continue to shell out more and more money for crap they probably don't need and only do so because Apple's marketing is so amazingly effective.
Apple has also shown us that they can do things like create their own proprietary connectors, protocols and other standards that will keep Apple users tied in to their ecosystem... and users take it up their arse like champs, gladly shelling out more and more money. I don't know if they plan on adopting USB-C across the board but for now they are profiting nicely from their locked-in systems. I also remember their Bluetooth connectivity was also broken, to the extent that I had no issues connecting certain devices to Android and BlackBerry and almost every other phone, but Apple refused to properly connect to it (like it was using it's own "interpretation" of Bluetooth protocol).
I don't want to pick on Apple only... this is happening across the board to various extents by all companies. The only way to vote is with your money. Refuse to buy anything you can't tear apart easily and repair if needed, or just accept the fact as disposable electronics are now the norm and prepare to pay continuously as batteries continue to die.
I for one am using a Garmin Vivofit 4 which runs on a single battery that you change yearly, not a rechargeable. How many smartwatches out there have now glued in batteries that you charge daily/weekly? How easy is it to change them? My wife's Apple Watch decided to pop open a few weeks ago... battery swelled and screen popped off the case. It was under the "extended" warranty Apple has because there was a major problem with many of their watches. Otherwise, that would have been an expensive needless repair, as it hasn't been that long. Next time the battery swells and decides to pop open the watch (or explode on the wrist) I am not so sure Apple will fix it.
--- End quote ---
"Why do you rob banks?"
"Because that's where the money is!"
All joking aside, lack of repairability is a problem all across the tech sector, and not just consumer electronics. Even our beloved test equipment...there's no way the stuff that's selling for 5-6 figures today will last and be repairable as long as the 5-6 figure test equipment made in the 1980s by HP, Tektronix, and others will.
bd139:
--- Quote from: amyk on March 27, 2019, 12:31:45 am ---
--- Quote from: bd139 on March 26, 2019, 12:03:40 pm ---How do you make smaller, more efficent things without sacrificing repair?
--- End quote ---
By using your brain. How would you design AirPods with replaceable batteries?
The carrying/charging case is simple, just don't glue everything together.
https://mindtribe.com/2017/01/apple-airpod-charger-teardown-and-reverse-engineering/
Look, screws! ...once you're already inside. The bastards cleverly decided to glue together the pieces that stop you from taking it apart, but clearly aren't cost-saving if they are still screwing the insides together.
For the buds themselves, once again less glue and more threaded/snap-fit parts would do the trick. It wouldn't make them much bigger if at all, but certainly helps repairability. If they were really smart they could do away with wires almost completely, and use spring contacts to make disassembly and assembly easier.
Here's something to consider, an iPhone 5 clone with an easily removable battery: https://www.gizchina.com/2013/09/24/jiayu-g5-teardown/
--- End quote ---
I just replaced an iPhone 5 battery the other day. It was very very easy. There’s a pull tab to remove it that worked really well and I was met with screws. Took 10 minutes.
The things that are are glued together and don’t need to be I tend to agree with. The problem with the AirPods is that to maintain hygiene and smooth edges so you don’t cut your ears and face open you need very controlled surfaces and that means using plastics and glue.
The charger, not so much so I agree there.
Edit: or do I. Looking at the tear down, what are you going to do inside it? Feck around for 4 hours finding parts, wait a month for them to arrive, swap out, or go into Apple store while you’re on a shopping trip and brow beat someone at the retard bar to give you a new one. My time is most productive spent on the latter.
bd139:
--- Quote from: 0culus on March 27, 2019, 03:33:02 am ---
--- Quote from: edy on March 27, 2019, 03:05:54 am ---Let's face it, Apple has no interest whatsoever in designing their products to be repairable. They want their products to look stylish, it is all about design. If the best design means no externally visible screws, extremely compact design, curved white plastic bodies, thinness, that is what they will do. It hasn't hurt their bottom line... and other manufacturers are following suit.
If companies gain market share and profitability BECAUSE they make their devices easier to repair, other companies will do the same. But as we have seen, Apple has proven that nobody cares about repair as people continue to shell out more and more money for crap they probably don't need and only do so because Apple's marketing is so amazingly effective.
Apple has also shown us that they can do things like create their own proprietary connectors, protocols and other standards that will keep Apple users tied in to their ecosystem... and users take it up their arse like champs, gladly shelling out more and more money. I don't know if they plan on adopting USB-C across the board but for now they are profiting nicely from their locked-in systems. I also remember their Bluetooth connectivity was also broken, to the extent that I had no issues connecting certain devices to Android and BlackBerry and almost every other phone, but Apple refused to properly connect to it (like it was using it's own "interpretation" of Bluetooth protocol).
I don't want to pick on Apple only... this is happening across the board to various extents by all companies. The only way to vote is with your money. Refuse to buy anything you can't tear apart easily and repair if needed, or just accept the fact as disposable electronics are now the norm and prepare to pay continuously as batteries continue to die.
I for one am using a Garmin Vivofit 4 which runs on a single battery that you change yearly, not a rechargeable. How many smartwatches out there have now glued in batteries that you charge daily/weekly? How easy is it to change them? My wife's Apple Watch decided to pop open a few weeks ago... battery swelled and screen popped off the case. It was under the "extended" warranty Apple has because there was a major problem with many of their watches. Otherwise, that would have been an expensive needless repair, as it hasn't been that long. Next time the battery swells and decides to pop open the watch (or explode on the wrist) I am not so sure Apple will fix it.
--- End quote ---
"Why do you rob banks?"
"Because that's where the money is!"
All joking aside, lack of repairability is a problem all across the tech sector, and not just consumer electronics. Even our beloved test equipment...there's no way the stuff that's selling for 5-6 figures today will last and be repairable as long as the 5-6 figure test equipment made in the 1980s by HP, Tektronix, and others will.
--- End quote ---
Problem is that we have moved to FRU replacement because the individual parts of the equipment are extremely difficult to service independently due to the greater integration. Also equipment mostly consists of machine placed and soldered boards now rather than human effort. For this we have got massively better performance and simple manufacturing which is a good thing because for the majority of items it works out cheaper. On a lot of stuff it’s not economically viable to bother repairing it because by the time we’ve approached the problem, done the diagnostics, ordered and replaced the parts, QA’ed the work, it has cost more in human time than replacing the faulty part.
A fine example: I worked on a production line for a bit that was TH and fully repairable stuff and the total hour effort to fill and test one board was about 5 hours average as most boards required manual intervention and debug/repair due to the nature of the design. The board was £3100 a go for a 100x160 Eurocard part (milspec). The production engineers redesigned this with cheaper SMD parts, boundary scan, and used the company pick and place and got the cost down to £1150 a board and build/test cycle down to under an hour. When boards came back for repair they were shredded with no diagnostics, firmware burned to match the original, run through QA JIT and another board sent out. One of the motivations to do this is there is no one who wanted to or could be paid to sit there and debug boards. I didnt want to do it, especially after I got a taste for automation (and incidentally dedicated the last 25 years of my life automating away crap like this)
Whether we like it or not economical viability comes in from greater automation, FRU replacement and design rationalisation. For this we get massively improved reliability, amazing performance, much lower cost, much better functionality. For this we sacrifice the notion of repair somewhat. It’s s good trade off.
The right to repair movement is a good thing generally but at the same time it’s counterproductive in a lot of circumstances. It’s not 1975 and most stuff is not equipment we design ourselves for low volume hand production. And I’m fine with that.
ConKbot:
My sennheiser IEMs haven't suffered any battery degradation even after years of use, and I can still use them for 40+ hours without having to charge. Maybe Apple can license the technology from them.
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