Right

Exactly 4 years ago last Monday, 7 February 2018, I was in New York and, for some reason, I went to the Apple Store in New York’s Soho and bought a paid of AirPods. I don’t recall why but I suspect I had forgotten some other headphones and decided that I’d invest in the latest fad.  In the intervening years I’ve used them a lot less than I would have liked to because I remain worried they will fall out of my ears. That’s never actually happened.

As with all modern electrical the condition of the battery in the pods (and probably in the case too) has got worse.  But the battery in the right AirPod performed much worse than the one on the left so that I was getting less than a third of the time the other ear was giving me. 

My other battery-powered Bluetooth headphones, which are not AirPods, are also suffering from slow battery degradation as they get older and it turns out to be quite handy to have a second pair than I can swap out when I am on a train. But the discrepancy in life has become annoying.  So, on Monday I contacted Apple Support asked them if there was anything that could be done about the right pod. They are well outside of any warranty so I was not expecting them to be replaced but I hoped to be able to buy just one AirPod. And, it turns out, after spending some time on both the online chat support and talking to somebody on the telephone , they will send out just the one earphone. It’s not cheap but it is cheaper than having to invest in a new set.  And, on Tuesday, the new AirPod arrived.

So, today, the old AirPod is packed and ready to be shipped back and this is the lovely new one. Of course, I now have the battery discrepancy in the opposite way because the new battery lasts a lot longer than the four year old one in the left ear - but at least they now survive for a useable duration.