Fairphone's Fairbuds Are True Wireless Earbuds With Repairable Design, User-Replaceable Batteries (liliputing.com) 75
Fairphone, the Dutch smartphone maker known for its user-repairable smartphones, is bringing its ultra-repairable design philosophy to their "Fairbuds" wireless earbuds. Liliputing reports: The Fairbuds have the sort of features we've come to expect from premium earbuds. They're noise-cancelling Bluetooth 5.3 earbuds with support for wind noise reduction and an environmental noise-cancelling feature that sets noise reduction depending on your environment. Fairphone's earbuds have six microphones, 11mm drivers, and an IP54 rating for water (and sweat) resistance. They also support multipoint connectivity, which means you can connect the earbuds to two different devices at the same time (like your phone and your laptop).
The earbuds offer up to 6 hours of battery life and they come with a charging case that gives you another 20 hours of use between charges. And Fairphone offers iOS and Android apps that let you adjust EQ, install firmware updates, and make other changes. Other features include automatic play and pause when the Fairbuds are removed from your ears, capacitive touch controls, and three different ear tips sizes included in the box.
But the key thing that makes these earbuds different from the competition is that they're designed to be repairable rather than replaceable. Lose just one earbud? Fairphone will let you buy a single earbud without paying again for a full set with a case. Is your battery life degrading a few years after purchase? Fairphone will sell battery replacements and let you swap out the batteries in your earbuds or charging case. All told, the company offers seven repairable/replaceable components for the Fairbuds. The company also offers a 3-year warranty for its new Fairbuds and notes that they're manufactured using:
- 70% of all materials used in production are fair and recycled (fair = ethically sourced).
- 100% of rare earth elements used are recycled.
- Plastics used in the Fairbuds and their charging case are recycled. The Fairbuds are currently only available in Europe for 149 euros.
The earbuds offer up to 6 hours of battery life and they come with a charging case that gives you another 20 hours of use between charges. And Fairphone offers iOS and Android apps that let you adjust EQ, install firmware updates, and make other changes. Other features include automatic play and pause when the Fairbuds are removed from your ears, capacitive touch controls, and three different ear tips sizes included in the box.
But the key thing that makes these earbuds different from the competition is that they're designed to be repairable rather than replaceable. Lose just one earbud? Fairphone will let you buy a single earbud without paying again for a full set with a case. Is your battery life degrading a few years after purchase? Fairphone will sell battery replacements and let you swap out the batteries in your earbuds or charging case. All told, the company offers seven repairable/replaceable components for the Fairbuds. The company also offers a 3-year warranty for its new Fairbuds and notes that they're manufactured using:
- 70% of all materials used in production are fair and recycled (fair = ethically sourced).
- 100% of rare earth elements used are recycled.
- Plastics used in the Fairbuds and their charging case are recycled. The Fairbuds are currently only available in Europe for 149 euros.
Viral marketing or spam? (Score:1)
Re:Viral marketing or spam? (Score:4, Insightful)
The link in your sig is dead by the way. Maybe a vacuum tube has gone pop.
Re:Viral marketing or spam? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You need to ask? Well, just in case you really do not know: Planned obsolescence. The Fairphone people are content with less business but more repeat business. You know, the thing that happens when an engineering company is not run by greedy business asshomles.
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Who the hell mods this troll? This is spot on.
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Thanks. Some people lack the personal honor to not abuse the moderation system.
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Some Apple fan.
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That's because you're fully self-healing. Ok, maybe not fully, but at a level that has not been reached even with military hardware, let alone consumer hardware that has "you should throw this away soon and buy a new one" written all over.
Re: Viral marketing or spam? (Score:2)
It is mostly a marketing gimmick. I have never needed to replace batteries in any premium product. By the time the batteries arenâ(TM)t useful, neither is the technology. I still have my iPhone 6S with the original battery and it has degraded to roughly 70%, which is still relatively useful.
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I'm guessing you never used earbuds. The entire shtick with them is that you're supposed to put them into charging case when not using them. Which means for most people typical usage will be "discharge 20-30%, charge back to 100%" which is about the single worst thing you can do to a lithium ion battery in terms of charge cycling. This is how you wear it out very rapidly. Which is why most earbuds become borderline unusable in a couple of years due to very worn battery.
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Correct, but how do you do it?
The case they come in will recharge them as soon as you put them in. So what are your options? Not put them back into the case and have them being tossed about in your pocket and collect up every piece of lint they can find while at the same time wearing out from rubbing against keys?
Re: Viral marketing or spam? (Score:1)
I have the original AirPods, they still work well. Do you really use them for more than a few meetings in a row? They come with 10 or 20h of battery life, even cutting it in half is sufficient and modern battery management never charges or discharges completely nor do they use LiIon.
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50% in a year is not unusual reduction of battery life for buds, and if you use ANC, there's no way in hell any buds that aren't massive will be able to go 20 hours without charging. Now if you don't use them all that much as you apparently don't, you sure won't care.
For everyone else who actually uses them, yes it matters. To see how much it matters, just look at what is being promoted in marketing.
Apple is one of the worst ones in the bunch for this. They are the ones that pioneered burning down the batte
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Sounds to me like you need to replace the battery in your iPhone 6S but are in denial.
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Re: Viral marketing or spam? (Score:1)
It lasts through the day, when I got it, it lasted 3 days but applications got heavier. I charge it at night and it works all day doing your average Bluetooth in the car, email, IM and browsing.
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Main reason is planned obsolescence. Same reason they don't condition the battery and make it awkward not to put it in the case when not worn. Maximize battery wear and make people replace them.
But there's another reason. It's genuinely hard to make battery easily replaceable in form factor this small. According to their video, Fairbuds add quite a bit of weight in a very awkward position to enable easy battery swapping. It sits high outside your ear, which makes me question how well these will stay in your
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I don't think these have replaceable batteries either. The article seems to think so, but the actual "repairing your fairbuds" video from the company shows replacing the battery in the *case*.
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That is not correct: the earbud batteries are user-replaceable. The Lilliputing article embeds a second video [youtube.com] that provides and overview of most of the repair processes. Here at 1:19 you can see [youtu.be] opening the bud's battery tray to replace the battery.
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Yes, I saw that they were offering earbud batteries, unfortunately shortly after I replied. Odd their battery replacement instructions only link to the case battery part of the video.
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This is everything slashdot wants but they will still bitch about reasons to not buy them.
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Alexa just told me these cost $161 in freedom bucks. I'm bitching because I'm not an audio snob and that'd buy a lot of pairs of generic Bluetooth headphones from Five Below.
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Add to that the price of replacement batteries to make use of their gimmick feature. At that point you'll have to consider if it's even worth it because technology will have moved on and you could be using that money on a current model instead.
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I'm not interested. It doesn't use AAs. What am I supposed to do when I'm at the convenience store buying smokes and my battery dies?
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Fairphone has always been a sham. They sell eco-chic to guilty Europeans, but their products are overpriced and underdeliver. What we want is for Apple and its copycats to stop being actively hostile to repairability. This kind of sham repairability is just jumping on the bandwagon.
I bet this will blow your mind: Maybe instead of forcing people to buy disposable wireless headphones, you just put the headphone jack back in your phone. I know, right?
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Apple used to ship their phones with Lightning-to-3.5mm adapters, is this no longer the case? Also Apple's wired EarPods come in 3.5mm, USB-C and Lightning varieties and they're excellent and cheap so it's not like there's no good wired option.
I'm probably an atypical user but I only use wireless earbuds with my laptop, with a phone I prefer wired because I can more easily pop them in and out of my ears with less risk of losing them and a phone fits in my pocket anyway negating almost all of the negatives o
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Apple used to ship their phones with Lightning-to-3.5mm adapters, is this no longer the case? Also Apple's wired EarPods come in 3.5mm, USB-C and Lightning varieties and they're excellent and cheap so it's not like there's no good wired option.
I'm probably an atypical user but I only use wireless earbuds with my laptop, with a phone I prefer wired because I can more easily pop them in and out of my ears with less risk of losing them and a phone fits in my pocket anyway negating almost all of the negatives of having a wire. Maybe it'd be worth it for sealing ear buds just to reduce microphonics from the cable but I strongly prefer open.
Yes, the rageboners some people have about the unreliable phone jack are just Apple haters looking for a reason to take a temper tantrum.
In a world where people have to plug things in, even adapters, it makes zero sense to make the lightning to 3.5 mm adapters an insult that dare not be allowed.
So if bluetooth is an insult to their finely toned ears that demand audiophile level reproduction, they can still plug in that headphone they picked up at Big Lots.
Me? I've never used myiPhone headphone adap
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Fairphone has always been a sham. They sell eco-chic to guilty Europeans, but their products are overpriced and underdeliver. What we want is for Apple and its copycats to stop being actively hostile to repairability. This kind of sham repairability is just jumping on the bandwagon.
I bet this will blow your mind: Maybe instead of forcing people to buy disposable wireless headphones, you just put the headphone jack back in your phone. I know, right?
That's bullshit! Apple needs to return to trusted tube technology.
"...True Wireless Earbuds" (Score:2)
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There's an entire category of those things. It usually features a necklace like structure from which buds extend on wires to your ears.
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"True Wireless" is meant to distinguish from Bluetooth earbuds that were joined by a wire, such as the discontinued Fitbit Flyer. Admittedly the term is a bit of an anachronism now.
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This is true. The wired-but-wireless earbuds are actually better. The Fitbit Flyers actually had real buttons, too! But everyone's drank the Apple kool-aid and just copies the AirPods, so...
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Only supports AAC and SBC over A2DP (Score:5, Interesting)
Sad to see a new bluetooth device coming out that doesn't support LE Audio, the new audio standard introduced in Bluetooth 5.2.
Also no support for the various high-quality proprietary A2DP codecs you tend to see on Android like AptX Adaptive, AptX Voice, LDAC, etc.
Only supports AAC and SBC.
If you're on iPhone you probably have Apple's buds. If you're on Android you have high-quality, feature-rich options from actual audio companies for about the same price.
It's cool to have replaceable batteries but the device is already outdated technology-wise. You're going to really have to want to vote with your wallet for this to make sense.
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Yeah, that's the big downside to them - it looks like the only benefit for these is the battery is replaceable.
That's it. Want sound quality? These won't do it (and from reviews, they don't sound all that great, either)
So I suppose you could get better earbuds that are worth listening to, or these things. Which remind you of the brown recycled paper, the rough brown "eco" toilet paper and such that was the rage a couple of decades ago when the whole green movement was taking off. Yes, the products are worse
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Fairphone has those problems in all of its products. You get what you paid for: sustainability, repairability. But it comes at a cost of being a generation or so behind in terms of tech for the same price.
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Well. In some regards yes. Like that easily removed and replaceable battery. Definitely a generation or more behind. Also the idea that you do not need to get a new phone every 2 years, yep, you pay for that and that idea is so obsolete, outright ancient. Also definitely not poser-asshole compatible. And the thing being actually somewhat sturdy and able to service some abuse? That is soooo outdated. If you want a personality prosthesis, definitely do not get a Fairphone! If, on the other hand, you want a so
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It's special in a fairly unique way on the market. So like all special things, it's exceptionally poser-asshole compatible. I know at least one lady who bought it for posing with it and she's also a vegan. Don't need to ask her, she'll tell you.
And that's fine. It's a personal choice, and if you want to have a thing that makes you special and lets you be an ass about it, be an ass about it. It's a free country. I just use my freedom of association.
Sturdy and able to take abuse? That's a norm on the market n
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Posing with a Fairphone? That is special. Some people ...
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And before I forget. Remember that in a couple of years, every new phone sold in EU that isn't somehow specialist will need to have a user accessible and swappable battery. And once that R&D is done, as most phones have all frequencies of the world nowadays due to work that was done on RF filters some time ago, you can just buy an EU version of the phone you like to have an easily swappable battery. Which is the main thing people want to replace to make their electronic thing last longer.
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Yep. The main reason I have a Fairphone is that battery. I do like that I could compile my own system image or put alternate firmware on it without jumping though hoops, but that is not a major use-case.
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That helps indeed. Locked bootloaders should've also been a target for that EU legislation package.
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I agree. Well. Maybe next time. They can do "secure" boot on PC as well then and all the closed "security" processors in modern CPUs.
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Honestly, that's just legacy from PC being an open platform with many operating systems existing for it.
If microsoft could take it away, they would in a flash.
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Sure, obviously they would. They have tried often enough. One of the few positive aspects of their incompetence is that they were not smart enough to get that done and now it is too late.
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Even the iPhone
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Same benefit as before. You can swap them for a cost of a battery at your leisure.
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You know it's possible to use headphones with a laptop, no?
Dumbass.
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Well that answers the question I was looking for: do we care more about replaceable parts that you may have to deal with someday, or do you care more about audio quality, which you have to deal with every day?
For me, it's quality first. If you can't bring high quality codecs, I'm not even interested in the hardware at all. It doesn't matter if you have the most amazing hardware in existence if the signal is bitcrushed from the source.
proprietary = incompatible junk (Score:3)
>> high-quality proprietary A2DP codecs
If it is proprietary, it is incompatible junk.
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Have a look at Samsung's products. According to iFixIt they are easy to replace the batteries in, and they support all the latest codecs etc. The Sony ones aren't horrendous either.
Not as easy as these, but you get all mod cons...
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Have a look at Samsung's products. According to iFixIt they are easy to replace the batteries in, and they support all the latest codecs etc. The Sony ones aren't horrendous either.
Not as easy as these, but you get all mod cons...
That's fine, if you happen to find a Samsung or Sony which has good support in LineageOS or some other privacy-enabling OS. I have a Samsung and managed to put LineageOS on it, but the speakerphone has never worked. The speaker itself is good - there's lots of volume for music and videos. But during a phone call the level is unusably low
I've read about other little - and not so little - quirks associated with installing a third-party OS on a mainstream phone. So for those who value privacy and the ability t
Not Impressed (Score:4, Interesting)
6 hours battery life? That's not very good. I have Anker earbuds that I bought for a fifth of the cost that regularly give me 8+ hours of battery life, and that's with the noise cancelling on. Have they considered that maybe it's more environmentally friendly to just not manufacture such a low-quality product to begin with?
And the replaceable battery is a joke. Since the battery isn't a standard size, you're relying on the manufacturer to continue to produce them for the next 10 years. The thing about lithium batteries is they have a fixed shelf life. It's actually an amazing thing that I can buy a 50-year-old electronic gadget and put standard AA batteries in it, and it works fine. Unless I can do that with these headphones, there won't be any truly replaceable wireless earbud batteries.
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And the replaceable battery is a joke. Since the battery isn't a standard size, you're relying on the manufacturer to continue to produce them for the next 10 years. The thing about lithium batteries is they have a fixed shelf life. It's actually an amazing thing that I can buy a 50-year-old electronic gadget and put standard AA batteries in it, and it works fine. Unless I can do that with these headphones, there won't be any truly replaceable wireless earbud batteries.
Still much better than throwing away the whole thing when the batteries die.
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The batteries look like a standard size on their web site. Normal button cells for the earbuds, and a standard size "gumstick" cell for the case.
The battery life is quite disappointing. Okay if you don't travel long distance with them, but not ideal for a day at work or a long haul flight.
Speaking of flights why don't manufacturers put a headphone jack on the case so you can plug into the in-flight entertainment system? You need to carry a separate Bluetooth transmitter for that.
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If there's a will for more than whining about it, there's always been a way.
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Agreed. I get unlimited battery life on my wired headphones. Maybe they should just put the jack back in.
Different strokes for different folks. I've had too many cords get caught on something, a couple times breaking the headphones and even destroying the phone jack. So I'm pretty happy with my Bose noise cancelling BT headphones. Never been ripped off my head. I do have a corded studio headset, but that is never used outside of sitting at my desk.
huge like xbox (Score:2)
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They're comparable to the higher end stuff from Bose, Sony, Sennheiser, Beats (Apple), but without any of the battery life or audio quality.
That's really not winning the argument they're trying to make.
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And less battery life. Really, these earbuds are a good argument for non-replaceable batteries. Meanwhile, Apple and their many copycats is gluing in batteries in full-sized laptops. Don't we have bigger fish to fry?