Whether it be electronics, automobiles or medical equipment, the manufacturers should not be able to horde “oem” parts, render your stuff useless if you repair it with aftermarket parts, or hide schematics of their products.
Summary video by Marques Brownlee
Great channel covering and advocating right to repair, Lewis Rossman
Interesting! Wireless earbuds are usually very unreliable, so this is a nice change. But that also means these could be an improvement still without being very relatable. I'll check it out!
Edit: disregard this comment, I thought it said that just announced the most reparable ear bud, not nerfed it. I'll check out the original xm3 and 4 instead of the 5
Yeah I've had so much bad luck with wireless buds. Wish they were a little more consistent for SKUs that arrent like 100+ dollars
I can't find the newsletter/blogpost but I did read that fairphone are apparently looking at making their earbuds more repairable than they are currently, which is good.
I have WF-1000XM3's right now that are still running fine, dont really use them much so the battery degradation is a non issue for me at the moment, but when it is I'm happy enough to attempt a battery replacement when the time comes.
I have the XM4's and battery life has gone from great to terrible in the last 3 months. Now they last about 15 minutes to a charge. Good to know these are reasonably easy to repair, looks like I'm off to eBay to find batteries.
I bought the original Galaxy Buds in 2019 because they had both Qi charging and seemed to have reasonably easy to replace internal batteries. (although whether I can source them is another question)
But turns out I haven't had any battery life concerns since. Unfortunately I just lost them somewhere a month or two ago so hoping they turn up soon. :(