Big companies care about what their customers care. Customers don't care about replaceable batteries, or at least not enough to stop buying.

And this is where government needs to step in, imo. We can't let peoples shopping habits decide what environmental damage is done.

edit: Interesting downvotes. I would appreciate clarification and discussion.

My opinion is such that people will not choose to better the environment. People have let the oceans fill with plastic for years. What faith do you have in the the population as a whole to adapt to environmental impacts before they become a massive problem? If people were capable of this, would they not already have adapted? Hell, people have to be forced to wear seatbelts for their own safety.

I have less faith in the government to give them anymore power than they already have.

I'm super open to alternatives. Thoughts?

I don't care about replacing the batteries myself, I care about how much it will cost to get them replaced. For my AirPods the price reasonable is so I don't really care.

It's the same as my car. I buy a based on the cost of maintenance not how easy it is to maintain myself.

No, they care about profit. This goal creates products that only roughly align with what the customers want.

I am sure customers care about their products lasting longer.

Maybe their market research says that customers like to upgrade things every couple of years.

I think that the issue here is it would be very hard to create a product that has replaceable batteries of this size and:

* Is waterproof

* Is small enough to be comfortable

* Has a battery large enough to be useful

* Has easy battery replacement - this is a really important one to me here. Remember that not everyone using these has the manual dexterity of a healthy 20 year old. These products have to be designed so that almost everyone can use + maintain them. If replacing the battery is a fiddly and hard thing to do for elderly and less dextrous users it is a hostile design and I'm okay with it not being done on accessibility grounds.

It doesn't have to be easy to replace, there just needs to be an intended way to do it. Even if it requires you to bring them to a shop and let them do it (e.g. how most phones handle it). There's absolutely no reason they can't be engineered that way, don't be foolish. The problem is priorities. It is 2020, and some still haven't realized how important these issues are becoming?

Don't want to single out Google, and this little product launch too much, same goes for Apple, and all the others who still think it doesn't matter. And before people say, well the little amount of plastic and metal inside the pods is insignificant compared to all the other stuff we throw away daily, I'd say the message is equally important.

There is no reason to not make these lasting. Only priorities.

Better to pay a 20y to replace it than throwing the entire thing to the bin.

Agreed. Most people can't replace a wristwatch battery, but wristwatches are not considered disposable items. I don't see why similar approach couldn't work here. Non user-serviceable does not have to mean non-serviceable. Unfortunately large companies consider serviceability a bug not a feature, and not enough consumers vote with their wallets to prove them wrong.

A screw and gaskets would keep it waterproof, add little weight and size, and if the screw is has a Phillips head, it will be sufficiently easy to replace.

But, it requires more work to assemble, and does not create an end-date on the existence on the product, so there’s really no reason a mainstream company will do this on their own; they’ll leave it to niche providers.

How much weight and bulk would that add? Not to mention that the battery package itself will need to be larger and more robust. These things are barely small enough to use as it is.

So you're basically saying that wireless in-ear headphones shouldn't exist then.

Everything inside of them is already so miniaturized, there simply isn't space for a replaceable battery, not to mention how you'd maintain waterproofing since, you know, you run and sweat with these in.

Have you seen X-rays of the AirPods Pro for example? Can you figure out a way where the battery would become replaceable?

That's fascinating to see that it's technically possible, so thanks for that.

Though it does note that it will lose its original waterproofing capabilities, which seems like a pretty big deal.

But also... it's not like they were designed to be replaceable. This is electronics surgery that I know I could never attempt personally. But it is interesting that you might get electronics shops to do it for you.

Thanks for the info.

Is this true? Can we say that the extra parts needed for the user replaceable mechanisms and user being responsible for the disposal of the replaced battery is definitely more environmentally friendly than replacing the whole device by the manufacturer?

This got me thinking. Are there _common_ standard consumer rechargable batteries of the tinier sizes? I know of the little watch batteries but never perceive those as having high quality rechargable options.