Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by samatman on Saturday August 06, 2022 @09:05PM (#32372945)

I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had.

It's the cord. For me, a max of six months of fiddling with the damn thing and it breaks.

I've had real headphones last quite a bit longer— but I buy the ones with replaceable cords. The pair I still have is on its fourth cord and second pair of muffs.

I don't view it as any sort of economic, human, or environmental catastrophe, that they stop holding a charge after... how long again? I've had a pair of Pros since before the pandemic which seem to hold up fine.

So I'm around what, twenty cents a day? It's a rare day I don't wear them for a solid hour.

It undermines the argument to pick the easy, lazy, and really rather bad example that everyone else flocks to for some bizarre reason. It's genuinely hard to come up with a better product category for glued-in batteries than in-ear wireless headphones.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by Tijdreiziger on Saturday August 06, 2022 @09:43PM (#32373145)

Are you comparing these against Apple’s wired earphones? Because Apple’s cords are almost hilariously bad, and perhaps the best example of a product that’s designed to fail. (In fairness, they’ve improved somewhat over the years, but the bar was on the floor.)

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by userbinator on Saturday August 06, 2022 @10:11PM (#32373275)

Apple’s cords are almost hilariously bad, and perhaps the best example of a product that’s designed to fail.

Ironically, that could at least partially be attributed to their use of "environmentally friendly" plastic with little to no plasticisers.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by ramraj07 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @09:27PM (#32373069)

Yeah I don’t get the environmental angle as well. It’s 10g, I’m sure there’s more lithium in a single AAA cell than 50 AirPods. Imagine how much more polluting a single dude in Texas rolling coal would do compared to everyone in Texas using AirPods.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by dylan604 on Sunday August 07, 2022 @01:13AM (#32374070)

Why the specific Texas dude? Like rednecks in other areas don't roll coal in their neck of the woods too?

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by andrekandre on Saturday August 06, 2022 @09:54PM (#32373190)

  > I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had.

same... now if only i could easily replace the batteries, it would be almost perfect (they just die on me mid-call sometimes)

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by timbargo on Saturday August 06, 2022 @10:37PM (#32373387)

There are services like this where you can exchange your Airpods for ones with replaced batteries! Note that I've never done it and can't vouch for the quality. I just read about it on HN once.

https://www.theswapclub.com/collections/airpod-swaps

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by tpetry on Sunday August 07, 2022 @02:24AM (#32374339)

I‘ve used a service like this to replace the battteries of my Airpods Gen 1. They are now again like the first day I had them.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by scarface74 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @11:19PM (#32373591)

And how much larger would they be?

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by vladvasiliu on Sunday August 07, 2022 @05:16AM (#32375081)

That's an interesting question, and I'd like an honest answer to that.

We've heard the same argument about phones, and my old Galaxy S5 with a user-replaceable battery was a whopping 0.5 mm thicker than an iPhone 13 mini. That's the width of a mechanical pencil lead. They're both water-resistant, too.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by scarface74 on Sunday August 07, 2022 @06:37AM (#32375412)

.5 inches and heavier for AirPods would make a huge difference ergonomically.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by vladvasiliu on Sunday August 07, 2022 @07:00AM (#32375512)

I said 0.5 millimeters. 0.5 inches is freaking huge, that's 1.25 cm. None of my smartphones have been that thick, let alone having that much of a difference.

According to google, 0.5 mm = 0.019685 in

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by strogonoff on Sunday August 07, 2022 @02:26AM (#32374347)

Cable replaceability is why I love IEMs like Shure SE215. Earbuds hardly break, but the cable breaks eventually. Less waste, plus the ability to choose a different cable.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by vladvasiliu on Sunday August 07, 2022 @05:28AM (#32375102)

> plus the ability to choose a different cable

Yup. I have a pair of Shure earbuds bought in 2011. When the cable started acting out, I replaced it with a lightning cable, since I had just got an iPhone. When that one started acting out, I replaced it with a Shure BT cable. Now I get great sound from my crappy work laptop.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by rowanG077 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @09:24PM (#32373057)

That's a pretty funny statement considering detachable cords exist. A cord is basically some copper and plastic sheet. Easily recyclable.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by samatman on Sunday August 07, 2022 @12:03AM (#32373802)

Gosh if I'd have known such a thing I surely would have mentioned buying four of them in the original post. Thanks for the tip Rowan.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by Mikealcl on Saturday August 06, 2022 @09:28PM (#32373073)

And some of us repair them ourselves, but most vendors don’t offer detachable cables.

Would be nice.

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Re:Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep th... by gibolt on Saturday August 06, 2022 @09:24PM (#32373053)

I use similar measurements to value/compare purchases and their impact.

- Value per use - Weight (analog for materials used) - Likely lifetime

Bonus for wireless headphones specifically is you can buy replacement cases, or single buds if any go bad.

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