As someone who gets a ridiculous amount of use out of their pods, I really hope this business pans out. I think the product is great, but batteries are consumable products. In fact, I would hope that one day it would be mandatory to offer battery replacements for all products you sell. (Do correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think Apple currently does this for pods?)
what's frustrating is that while batteries are consumable products they could last much longer if they stay between 80 and 20% capacity without overheating. (this is similar to what tesla does) I wish there was a "battery care" settings on all electronics that would respect limits like this so that I could get thousands of cycles out of my devices instead of only <1000.
Apple has added a feature which tries to do this intelligently to some extent but it's not the best at guessing what my needs are.
The majority of the time I do not need max or even half of max battery life from my devices. airpods I only use for an hour or two at a time for example and my phone is usually close to a charger.
Look at an airpod. Why should the battery be consumable but not the airpod? They have about the same amount of electronics. The average airpod user throws out more than an airpod's worth of plastic per day. I get junk mail with electronic trash that is bigger than an airpod.
Airpods are used with iPhones that have 20x the amount of electronics, so should last 20x as long.
People's real concern is the price which is higher than they guess because they think airpods are like regular headphones in longevity.
Podswap has stock of both new "blank" bud cases and batteries.
Crack open buds using some kind of jig. Scoop out the electronics. Solder to new battery. Cram it all back together.
That's how I'd do it.
Bonus points for choice of colors. I'd love clear or forest green or deep purple.
Watching a few air pod tear down videos, I find it weird the battery itself isn't part of the case. Like just use white instead of black. Have the barrel twist lock into place. Makes the battery replaceable. And that extra millimeter of diameter would probably be 50% more mAh.
I know replaceable batteries is un-Apple. But that's what I'd do.
Their FAQ is pretty clear that they actually replace the batteries somehow. I'm glad someone figured out how to do that, but I agree with you that the airpod batteries (like the batteries in everything else) should have been replaceable in the first place.
Seriously, I never understand the "environmental waste" argument as applied to AirPods.
The pair of buds weighs a third of a single disposable AA battery. There's less plastic than in an average Chinese takeout container.
If you want to complain that they're expensive to replace then go ahead. But as soon as anyone brings up the environment, give me a break. We're not talking about a 65" television that weight 55 pounds, c'mon. Each bud is four grams of mass.
If people threw out twenty pairs of AirPods a day, then sure let's worry about the environmental issue. But when they replace one pair every two to three years? I don't think so.
For whatever reason, AirPods, of all things, have become a go-to example of environmental waste and throwaway culture.
It's bizarre to me. I'm fairly confident that for minutes of pleasure / embodied energy, AirPods score higher than almost anything else I own, certainly among things with a battery and chip. They also last multiples of the time I would get out of wired earphones, which always die in a few months from work-hardening the copper wires until they break.
My model is this: some people just hate Apple. It's an identity thing, phones are very personal and bring out tribal instincts (blue vs. green speech bubbles!), and AirPods are a visible signifier of "team Apple". So some people just, don't like 'em ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The reasons are downstream of that.
I also think that, since the only consumables are the battery and speaker membranes, it's great that someone wants to replace the batteries when they go bad. Membranes as well! Making consumer goods last longer is virtuous.
Even with a pretty big pricing gap ($100 for Apple and $60 for Podswap, per pair), this seems like a risky business to enter. What makes them think that Apple won't drop the price of their service by $30 and put them out of business?
Apple could do swaps much more efficiently due to their physical stores (where you could swap in real-time), and most people would pay a $10 premium over Podswap to have the Apple name behind their purchase.
The only thing that would give me comfort about Podswaps' business model is the fact that Apple undoubtedly would prefer to sell you a new pair rather than fix up your old pair.
I’ve used podswap for my Gen 1 AirPods and it was fantastic. It took a couple cycles for everything to be back to normal (full charge, full volume) but they were up front that it takes a few recharges for everything to settle in.
This is a great idea and I wish we had this in the UK. I was quoted £65 to replace my failing, right AirPod and £130 to replace both of them when RRP for new ones are £160.
I'd much rather replace the batteries of my existing ones then buy a new pair but with such a small price difference to get a pair it doesn't seem worth it.
The web site states: "The first-ever battery replacement program."
I'm not sure this is true. Apple had an AirPods battery replacement program before COVID-19. I had my wife's done. I wanted to get mine done this past January, but it didn't seem to be an option anymore. Maybe because of the pandemic and the global supply chain problems and such.
"Only current" battery replacement program, maybe. But not first-ever.
I've gotten close. One thing I have noticed is when I drop the case on the floor it's not at all uncommon for it to open and for one or both of the buds to fly out. One time this happened to me while I was in the security line at the airport and I had to awkwardly back out of the line and look around but luckily I found the errant pod.
I'm mostly losing them in my bed since the Airpods are a solid, partner-compatible way to fall asleep to music.
My biggest annoyance with the Airpods Pro is that no one sells custom molds. The right one fits with the small plug, but none of the three sizes that ship with the Airpods seem to be compatible with my left ear, it's extremely loose. In any case it's uncomfortable walking with them out on the streets or driving with my bike simply because I'm always afraid they will randomly fall off and get lost or destroyed.
I've heard, anecdotally, of people losing their airpods often. I haven't yet, but curious how common that problem is?
It must be a thing, since Apple lets you use your devices to find your missing AirPods, and they are even part of the FindMe network.
I've sometimes wondered how many AirPods have been flushed down toilets around the world. Even if only .001% of AirPods meet their demise this way, considering the number of AirPods sold, it must be a pretty good number.
I love my Tozo T6, screw apple. $25 and I have better sounding way more cheaper product. I wouldn't care at all if my $25 headsets fail after a year or two. I'd get 6 pairs instead of one Apple. My other bluetooth earbuds worked over 2 years and had no battery problem until I lost them.
Are they actually replacing the battery at all? Or are they simply sending you “AirReps”? The clones these days cost $30. Most folks wouldn’t recognize the difference, except for the poor microphone recording quality.
This looks great! I just forwarded the link to a friend of mine, that was complaining to me, this morning, about a pair of original AirPods that had a bum battery.
I was hoping this was going to be a service for people who lost one AirPod to build a set. Apple’s pricing of an AirPod replacement puts it $30 from a new set
Over here I'm still using 3$ Panasonic earbuds from 2012.
I spent $15 dollars so I could have 1 in my car, 1 in my laptop bag, 1 next to my computer, and 2 backup for when I lose them or have new location. Haven't lost them yet.
Maybe you really do need wireless and it's worth the effort of charging and replacing batteries. Or maybe you are being sold a veblen good and your brain is exploited by a trillion dollar corporation's marketing department.
> We currently accept AirPod Generation 1 & 2. If you would like AirPod Pros, you can join the waitlist here [http://eepurl.com/hqjLSr] and be notified when we offer that service is available.
If anyone finds an Airpod on the street or in trash/landfills, they should be able to take it to the nearest Apple store or mail it and get 20-40$ back for it.
This should be the law for _all_ and any products, not just electronics.
Large corporations have cleverly shifted the responsibility of recycling on the consumer, while they get to reap all the profits and benefits. This was recently well explained in a John Oliver segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E
I agree that manufacturers should bear responsibility for recycling unwanted/returned devices - but why should they be forced to pay a bounty for lost/stolen devices?
You can’t just claim that they’ve shifted responsibility without arguing your point. It’s clear you have an axe to grind, but at the same time, where do we draw the line of individual responsibility?
It’s not like we haven’t known for decades we were killing the planet…and yet here we all are. Why does the average Joe get off the hook here?
So you're paying $60 to get your earbuds replaced, but you can't use the service if they have any external/cosmetic damage. Something here doesn't add up, is this just because Airpods don't have replaceable batteries?
> can't use the service if they have any external/cosmetic damage
My guess is that you're not getting your own airpods back, but someone else's. Quick turnaround that way and I think people want that for a product like this.
Positioning in Miami isn't ideal for turnaround, somewhere more central or a courier hub (Memphis or Louisville) would make more sense.
As repair-turnaround time is no longer an issue, and Airpods are small, they can fedex them to a low-cost country for repair. Miami has tons of connections to S. America, so maybe somewhere there.
Just a Fedex SmallBox holds a couple hundred airpods (they're 0.75inches if they were a rectangle, and smallbox is 200sqin), so they can really take low-cost to an extreme. If China, well, the batteries were going to be shipped from there anyway and that's most of the bulk anyway, but cylinders do pack better.
Many of these steps are scalable - could pre-tin battery leads, find a better solvent than alcohol to soften adhesive, custom heat protection cap rather than kitchen foil, dip metal cap in ultrasonic solvent bath, etc.
Maybe they have some domestic gigworkers in case they get really busy, but otherwise, save that dollar.
Etheryte|4 years ago
denimnerd42|4 years ago
Apple has added a feature which tries to do this intelligently to some extent but it's not the best at guessing what my needs are.
The majority of the time I do not need max or even half of max battery life from my devices. airpods I only use for an hour or two at a time for example and my phone is usually close to a charger.
alisonkisk|4 years ago
Airpods are used with iPhones that have 20x the amount of electronics, so should last 20x as long.
People's real concern is the price which is higher than they guess because they think airpods are like regular headphones in longevity.
Abishek_Muthian|4 years ago
There are comments on Reddit by Apple store employees who claim there's absolutely no repair policy for Apple pods, That they go straight to the bin.
specialist|4 years ago
Podswap has stock of both new "blank" bud cases and batteries.
Crack open buds using some kind of jig. Scoop out the electronics. Solder to new battery. Cram it all back together.
That's how I'd do it.
Bonus points for choice of colors. I'd love clear or forest green or deep purple.
Watching a few air pod tear down videos, I find it weird the battery itself isn't part of the case. Like just use white instead of black. Have the barrel twist lock into place. Makes the battery replaceable. And that extra millimeter of diameter would probably be 50% more mAh.
I know replaceable batteries is un-Apple. But that's what I'd do.
tyingq|4 years ago
They seem very picky about the condition of the case on what you send in, so I'm not sure they have a stock of new cases.
See: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0520/9856/4273/products/ai...
throwaway81523|4 years ago
iansinnott|4 years ago
(For anyone in Taiwan or Singapore, check out https://www.dr-pods.com/. Roughly 40USD replacement fee. No affiliation, I'm just a happy customer).
bruceb|4 years ago
Maybe they test the message and it resonated better than "Airpods should last longer than your last relationship" or "1 trick that Apple hates"
etc.
crazygringo|4 years ago
The pair of buds weighs a third of a single disposable AA battery. There's less plastic than in an average Chinese takeout container.
If you want to complain that they're expensive to replace then go ahead. But as soon as anyone brings up the environment, give me a break. We're not talking about a 65" television that weight 55 pounds, c'mon. Each bud is four grams of mass.
If people threw out twenty pairs of AirPods a day, then sure let's worry about the environmental issue. But when they replace one pair every two to three years? I don't think so.
samatman|4 years ago
For whatever reason, AirPods, of all things, have become a go-to example of environmental waste and throwaway culture.
It's bizarre to me. I'm fairly confident that for minutes of pleasure / embodied energy, AirPods score higher than almost anything else I own, certainly among things with a battery and chip. They also last multiples of the time I would get out of wired earphones, which always die in a few months from work-hardening the copper wires until they break.
My model is this: some people just hate Apple. It's an identity thing, phones are very personal and bring out tribal instincts (blue vs. green speech bubbles!), and AirPods are a visible signifier of "team Apple". So some people just, don't like 'em ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The reasons are downstream of that.
I also think that, since the only consumables are the battery and speaker membranes, it's great that someone wants to replace the batteries when they go bad. Membranes as well! Making consumer goods last longer is virtuous.
pieterk|4 years ago
Edit: updated pricing thanks to comment by tanduv
gnicholas|4 years ago
Apple could do swaps much more efficiently due to their physical stores (where you could swap in real-time), and most people would pay a $10 premium over Podswap to have the Apple name behind their purchase.
The only thing that would give me comfort about Podswaps' business model is the fact that Apple undoubtedly would prefer to sell you a new pair rather than fix up your old pair.
tanduv|4 years ago
santialbo|4 years ago
https://support.apple.com/es-es/airpods/repair/service
ryana|4 years ago
Absolutely no complaints.
gnicholas|4 years ago
deanclatworthy|4 years ago
azuriten|4 years ago
I'd much rather replace the batteries of my existing ones then buy a new pair but with such a small price difference to get a pair it doesn't seem worth it.
reaperducer|4 years ago
I'm not sure this is true. Apple had an AirPods battery replacement program before COVID-19. I had my wife's done. I wanted to get mine done this past January, but it didn't seem to be an option anymore. Maybe because of the pandemic and the global supply chain problems and such.
"Only current" battery replacement program, maybe. But not first-ever.
mikestew|4 years ago
OTOH, I guess Apple’s program does replace the batteries, just not in the way I thought they would.
conradev|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
seriousquestion|4 years ago
agency|4 years ago
mschuster91|4 years ago
My biggest annoyance with the Airpods Pro is that no one sells custom molds. The right one fits with the small plug, but none of the three sizes that ship with the Airpods seem to be compatible with my left ear, it's extremely loose. In any case it's uncomfortable walking with them out on the streets or driving with my bike simply because I'm always afraid they will randomly fall off and get lost or destroyed.
reaperducer|4 years ago
It must be a thing, since Apple lets you use your devices to find your missing AirPods, and they are even part of the FindMe network.
I've sometimes wondered how many AirPods have been flushed down toilets around the world. Even if only .001% of AirPods meet their demise this way, considering the number of AirPods sold, it must be a pretty good number.
hughrr|4 years ago
system2|4 years ago
Stop throwing money at Apple.
BrissyCoder|4 years ago
visualphoenix|4 years ago
e40|4 years ago
TheRealSteel|4 years ago
It doesn't mention what country or countries this is available in, so I'm guessing it's America only?
ChrisMarshallNY|4 years ago
culopatin|4 years ago
tokamak-teapot|4 years ago
jet_32951|4 years ago
deregulateMed|4 years ago
I spent $15 dollars so I could have 1 in my car, 1 in my laptop bag, 1 next to my computer, and 2 backup for when I lose them or have new location. Haven't lost them yet.
Maybe you really do need wireless and it's worth the effort of charging and replacing batteries. Or maybe you are being sold a veblen good and your brain is exploited by a trillion dollar corporation's marketing department.
maxerickson|4 years ago
(I tend to buy the ~$40 version though)
culopatin|4 years ago
throw03172019|4 years ago
advisedwang|4 years ago
> We currently accept AirPod Generation 1 & 2. If you would like AirPod Pros, you can join the waitlist here [http://eepurl.com/hqjLSr] and be notified when we offer that service is available.
purplecats|4 years ago
fraud|4 years ago
jaimex2|4 years ago
[deleted]
ashayh|4 years ago
Apple should be made to pay for it.
If anyone finds an Airpod on the street or in trash/landfills, they should be able to take it to the nearest Apple store or mail it and get 20-40$ back for it.
This should be the law for _all_ and any products, not just electronics. Large corporations have cleverly shifted the responsibility of recycling on the consumer, while they get to reap all the profits and benefits. This was recently well explained in a John Oliver segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E
lttlrck|4 years ago
qeternity|4 years ago
It’s not like we haven’t known for decades we were killing the planet…and yet here we all are. Why does the average Joe get off the hook here?
culopatin|4 years ago
smoldesu|4 years ago
Scoundreller|4 years ago
My guess is that you're not getting your own airpods back, but someone else's. Quick turnaround that way and I think people want that for a product like this.
Positioning in Miami isn't ideal for turnaround, somewhere more central or a courier hub (Memphis or Louisville) would make more sense.
As repair-turnaround time is no longer an issue, and Airpods are small, they can fedex them to a low-cost country for repair. Miami has tons of connections to S. America, so maybe somewhere there.
Just a Fedex SmallBox holds a couple hundred airpods (they're 0.75inches if they were a rectangle, and smallbox is 200sqin), so they can really take low-cost to an extreme. If China, well, the batteries were going to be shipped from there anyway and that's most of the bulk anyway, but cylinders do pack better.
Here's a video of the whole process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE9aB5aPbMM
Many of these steps are scalable - could pre-tin battery leads, find a better solvent than alcohol to soften adhesive, custom heat protection cap rather than kitchen foil, dip metal cap in ultrasonic solvent bath, etc.
Maybe they have some domestic gigworkers in case they get really busy, but otherwise, save that dollar.
wlesieutre|4 years ago
flatiron|4 years ago