Hacker News Reader

Comment by rarisma | Hacker News Reader

No charging: The battery lasts for up to years of average use. After the end of its life, send your ring back to us for recycling.

Apple hire this man.

View on HN

I am not sure about the use case but I was happy to see they advertise a long battery life. Still, as soon as I learnt that it is disposable I lost any interest in the product.

I very likely wouldn't have bought it anyway but I am surely not going to buy disposable tech.

Given the silicone rubber covering over the button, I wouldn't expect the hardware to last much longer anyways.

they should still have made it rechargeable tbh.

Yeah, this would have been a neat tool for "middle-of-the-night" thoughts, but I don't want a disposable electronic device. I get why it is that way; not having any charging hardware probably makes the device much smaller. But I'd rather it be a bit bigger and rechargeable.

I dont believe it would be even more circuitry. 2 exposed pins and maybe a diode if you really want some protection. They did this to sell more rings.

How much rechargeability really requires from hardware point of view?

I suppose the problem is that there are no standard for tiny magnetic chargers/cables. Every watch comes with their own, and they need be custom designed. For a device this large as much of the charging electronics should be outside the ring.

And another (small?) problem is that you'd need to electrically protect those external pins.

I'm with you, a little pogo-pin connector with all the charging circuitry in the external dongle would add, I don't know, ten dollars to the BOM. Very cool product but I won't buy a gadget I know I'd dispose in two years.

They can still make another version which is slightly larger and is rechargeable; and let people decide what they prefer more.

Always wonder why companies see suing people as a better course of action than hiring them.

"Years of average use" is great until you realize that it actually means "Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording".

Not sure how long my iphone can record for, but it's probably close to that. Afterwards I get to charge my phone instead of recycle it, though.

Apple, don't hire this man.

Edit for the downvoters: can my iphone not record that long or something? iphones can't recharge? Just hate Apple and love e-waste rings? Enlighten me.

> "Years of average use" is great until you realize that it actually means "Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording".

Is that based on anything, or is that just a guess?

Anyway, 12 hours' worth of 30 second recordings is a total of 1440 recordings. I guess three a day for a year does seem a little low?

> Just hate Apple and love e-waste rings? Enlighten me.

What e-waste? You send it in for recycling; they might just replace the battery and send you a your existing ring back.

>Is that based on anything, or is that just a guess?

Fancy enough, it's from the article!

Right under the "How long does the battery last?" heading.

Ah, I see, I didn't ctrl-f far down enough.

You have to trust it will actually get recycled though. I struggle to believe they'll be swapping out the batteries and reselling these as reconditioned. (I struggle to believe many people will even send them in for recycling tbh.)

The environmental benefit of sending it in for recycling is probably negated by transporting it all the way back to them for starters. Better to just drop it at the local ewaste collection facility. They'll be less specialised but there isn't a lot of material in it.

I guess there's a market for it and in the scale of things it isn't so bad: you could make 10 disposable vape sticks from the materials in one of these rings. And they're expensive enough that they'll never sell more than 100k or so of them. Relatively speaking it's no measurable impact.

For me it's more a matter of principle though. As a society we frown on disposable gizmos these days and for good reason.

That's not what recycling is. If you get it back it's recruitment.

Sorry I meant refurbishment. Not recruitment. DYAC

At the lower 12-hour end, if you're doing ~10 seconds per recording (remember this device is primarily for very short reminders and quick commands), that's ~4.3k recordings total. Also keep in mind that you'd only use it when it's inconvenient/undesirable to reach for your phone or any other device, so it's possible this may only be used say 5x in a day at most on average (likely far less). Which means ~2.5 years worth of usage at the lower end, and you'd only ever have to take it off if going for a swim.

Contrast to a phone that, though it has far more capability, you'd have to remember where it is before even reaching for it wherever, and usually has to be on a charger for anywhere from 30 minutes (with super charging) to a few hours daily. Or even being at a laptop/desktop, and at least having to open the relevant app, type/talk into it and then close again to return to primary task. The ring is an instant win for 24/7/365 convenient presence.

Why?

It’s easy to make a battery last years if it doesn’t do anything. You can send your devices to Apple as well for recycling.

[flagged]

Personal attacks are not welcome here, so please don't post like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com