Marvellous! Another product with non-replaceable batteries. Hostile to both consumers and the environment. Really sad to see that all these big companies don't care even to the smallest degree about all their own environmental pledges.
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.
It's the same as my car. I buy a based on the cost of maintenance not how easy it is to maintain myself.
* 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.