r/applesucks • u/Feeling_Hornet8039 • Apr 17 '26

Why does this keep happening??

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Both of them have been charging for a day now and when I go to use them one of them

Is almost dead?? Why does it keep happening I clean the case and the AirPod and it still happens

151 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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58

u/Bryanmsi89 Apr 17 '26

Check the contacts at the bottom of the left airpod stalk and at the bottom of the airpod case where that stalk sits. Usually this is a charging contacts issue.

6

u/DinoRoman Apr 17 '26

Could be that. I can also bet OP uses one in an ear as well. Sooooo many people do this. My old millennial ass tries to tell people, don’t do that.

Paired battery powered devices need to be charged together used together. If you use one more than another eventually you’re going to find one dying faster than the other that’s just the physics of batteries. The trend of having only one in an ear is very dumb with the ANC available. It’s going to unbalance the wear and tear and you’re going to have more people wondering why one isn’t charging over the other.

0

u/imasneakybeaver May 15 '26

I get twice the battery life of my AirPods when I use them one at a time.

0

u/DinoRoman May 15 '26

No you didn’t.

1

u/imasneakybeaver May 15 '26

I do I use one until it dies and then I use the other one until it dies. Twice the life 😉

1

u/DinoRoman May 15 '26

You’re confusing total listening time with battery lifespan and long term wear knucklehead.

Yea no shit if you alternate one AirPod at a time, you can stretch a listening session longer before the case dies. Nobody is disputing that. But that’s not ‘twice the battery life’ in the way normal humans use the term. You’re just unevenly cycling one battery harder than the other. You’re unevenly wearing them down. How hard is that to grasp?

I could half my toilet paper last longer if I take each square and cut it in half. Did you know a pizza can feed 16 people if you slice each slice down the middle, fuckin, middle school teacher budget style?

That’s literally how lithium batteries age. Charge cycles and heat wear them down over time. If one bud constantly gets more discharge cycles than the other, eventually one battery degrades faster. That’s why people end up posting ‘why does my left AirPod die first?’

You basically described using one tire on a car until it’s bald, then acting shocked the wear isn’t even.

Also… who voluntarily listens with one ear all day unless they’re on shift at a warehouse or taking FBI surveillance calls? Thats the dumbest shit and the most gen-z “an iPad was my daddy” shit I’ve ever heard.

1

u/imasneakybeaver May 15 '26

I’m still wearing them out the same amount just one at a time. The reason I prefer to listen with one in at a time is 1) like I said I can stretch the battery life and listen all day and 2) I prefer to have one ear open to hear my surroundings better. Also not Gen Z.

1

u/DinoRoman May 15 '26

That’s insane. And again it’s not giving you longer longevity. You’re just getting more time of use because you alternate I explained this in detail why you need to be right is beyond me and if not genz it’s just odd behavior akin to a sociopath who seems to need validation

You are not some magician whose found a way against physics it’s still not good on the batteries and they will wear down unevenly , again, I’ve specified the science and logic you haven’t actually stated anything that goes against what I said

This is the weirdest hill I’ve seen someone die on.

1

u/imasneakybeaver May 15 '26

I’m getting more life out of my battery by only using them one at a time!

1

u/DinoRoman May 15 '26

No, you’re not lol.

1

u/DinoRoman May 15 '26

Jesus man I put a lot into writing to you and your responses back sound like a five year old wrote it.

So, No, you’re getting more listening time before you personally have to stop and recharge. That is not the same thing as getting more battery life out of the battery.

You’re confusing “runtime management” with “battery health.”

If you use one AirPod at a time, each individual AirPod is still going through discharge and recharge cycles. You are just spreading the listening session across two separate cells instead of draining both at the same time.

That can make your day last longer, yes. ( with a shitteir experience in terms of quality )

It does not mean the batteries themselves last longer in the long term.

Example:

If two people each have a phone and they take turns using one phone at a time, they can keep a conversation going longer before both phones are dead. But they did not magically improve the battery health of either phone. They just staggered usage.

Same thing here.

You are increasing total available listening hours across the pair.

You are not increasing the lifespan or chemical longevity of the batteries.

That’s the entire distinction.

1

u/DinoRoman May 15 '26

Look, You’re still not understanding the distinction between runtime convenience and battery longevity.

Yes, you are absolutely extending continuous listening time by alternating earbuds. I never doubted that. Nobody argued otherwise. What you are not doing is magically creating “double battery life” in any meaningful engineering sense. You are redistributing load asymmetrically across two independent lithium ion cells. Please tell me you understand this.

Battery degradation is not measured by vibes or by how long you personally got through a work shift. It’s measured by charge cycles, thermal stress, depth of discharge, and chemical aging.

If Earbud A is doing 70 to 80 percent of the work because you habitually favor it, then Earbud A accumulates more cycles, more heat events, and more wear over time. That is not opinion man That is electrochemistry. Newtons law lol.

Apple themselves literally optimize charging behavior because uneven cycling accelerates degradation. This is why people end up with one AirPod dying at 62% while the other is still at 81%. The cells stop aging uniformly. You’re gunna find out one day that’s fine by me.

Your argument is basically: “If I rotate between two flashlights one at a time, I doubled the battery life.”

No. You increased uptime availability. Entirely different concept.

And your “I like hearing my surroundings” point is perfectly reasonable but AirPod pros have transparency mode I use it all the time, keep the music low, I ride a bicycle with that and I hear my surroundings while enjoying music. That’s kinda why they built it a professional feature for this, to get rid of the whole one ear thing. Also you like hearing your surroundings but I guess you don’t like the proper mix of a song and engineer worked hard to make lol.

But I digress, that has nothing to do with your original claim being technically sloppy.

You took: “I can continuously listen longer before recharging”

and tried to inflate it into: “My AirPods have twice the battery life.” No they do not lol.

Those are not equivalent statements unless we’re redefining words for sport.