That is the same problem just on the other end as it appears the AirPods can only be charged in their case.

> If you shell out for the AirPods, you can.

Which will need charging themselves.

Now I have to choose between being concerned about either my phone's battery or my headphones' battery.

The AirPods come with a charge case that holds 24 hours of juice. If you manage to end up in a scenario where your phone is out of power, your AirPods are out of power, and the AirPod case is out of power, that would be a fairly impressive bit of poor planning.

Besides, you can charge your phone and your AirPods at the same time, you just need to have two outlets (or two USB ports) and two cables.

Or you have better things to do than worrying about charging 2/3 devices when you used to only have to charge 1.

I wistfully remember the days when I could go away for the weekend and not have to take a charger for either my ipod or phone...

It sounds like you're describing something called "camping".

No I'm saying that 10 years ago one could go away for the weekend taking (and using) a phone and an ipod and not need to think to pack chargers.

10 years ago you weren't using a smartphone.

What's stopping you from doing this now other than yourself?

I would want to actually use the device(s) to make calls, send messages and listen to music - not just carry them around flat and useless in my pocket.

> a scenario where your phone is out of power, your AirPods are out of power, and the AirPod case is out of power

No, I'm simply talking about a scenario where I want to listen to something but my headphones aren't charged.

In such a scenario, I have to wait 15 minutes.

> that would be a fairly impressive bit of poor planning

Murphy's Law in this case means that the best outcome is to remove the possibility of poor planning by not having to juggle multiple devices that require you to plan your charging schedules around in the first place.

>that would be a fairly impressive bit of poor planning.

Isn't the point that you shouldn't need to 'plan' this at all. That's just extra mental load that isn't necessary.

The headphones charge in 15 minutes.

Those 15 minutes are 5 songs you could have listened to if your headphones did not need charging.

Someone will probably make an adapter allowing you to charge and use the 3.5mm jack, probably Apple. Another 40 bucks to spend though.

The only issue is that you also need to charge the AirPods, no?