Maximize Airpods Battery Life Right After Unboxing?

Starfyre

Starfyre

macrumors 68030
I just jumped on the Airpods bandwagon. How do I maximize Airpods battery life? Should I immediately plug it into the charger and wait for it to be charged to 100%? Or should I start using it immediately after taking it out of the box, then let it run fully out of battery before fully charging it to 100%?
 
As above, I wouldn't obsess over it. When I first got my AirPods 2, I paired it, then just charged it to full and then used it. I didn't even drain it at all on first use and was fine and still works great.
 
Not to scare you, but Airpods are basically designed to kill the battery ASAP. Once you attach them to an Apple account, they drain constantly whether they're in their case or not. In the case they're supposed to be in sleep mode, but if you charge the case and AirPods to 100 percent and leave it over night, you'll notice the case dropped in percentage and that's because the AirPods are constantly draining. If you pull the AirPods from the case and leave them out they'll drain from 100 to nearly 0 over night but the case will remain at 100.

In other words, dont sweat the battery. Just know that within a year or two, you'll be getting about half the advertised battery life out of them.
 
Herrpod said:
Not to scare you, but Airpods are basically designed to kill the battery ASAP.
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Source please? Never heard they were designed that way. All batteries will degrade over time, so yeah after year or two there will be some level of degradation.
 
chabig said:
Don't obsess over the batteries. Just use them normally.
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Indeed. I have had my 1st generation AirPods for over 2,5 years and I am only now starting to notice the battery life decrease. They still last for multiple hours (2-3 hours), but not as long as they used to (e.g. 5-6 hours). I use them all the time and haven't paid any special attention to maintaining battery life.

So not to worry. Your AirPods will last you a good long while.
 
DevinNj said:
Source please? Never heard they were designed that way. All batteries will degrade over time, so yeah after year or two there will be some level of degradation.
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All batteries do degrade over time, mostly through use. Airpods are always draining battery (when connected to an Apple account). That's why when they're out of the case and not being used they drain quickly and it's why when they're in the case, the case drops battery percentage because it has to constantly top the AirPods off. Every other bluetooth earbuds I own go to sleep when in the case and barely hit the batteries whereas Airpods do it constantly.
 
Herrpod said:
All batteries do degrade over time, mostly through use. Airpods are always draining battery (when connected to an Apple account). That's why when they're out of the case and not being used they drain quickly and it's why when they're in the case, the case drops battery percentage because it has to constantly top the AirPods off. Every other bluetooth earbuds I own go to sleep when in the case and barely hit the batteries whereas Airpods do it constantly.
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Due to the Find My capabilities?
 
Herrpod said:
All batteries do degrade over time, mostly through use. Airpods are always draining battery (when connected to an Apple account). That's why when they're out of the case and not being used they drain quickly and it's why when they're in the case, the case drops battery percentage because it has to constantly top the AirPods off. Every other bluetooth earbuds I own go to sleep when in the case and barely hit the batteries whereas Airpods do it constantly.
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Your original statement was that they were designed to kill the battery, just wondering where that tidbit of info came from. I'd never heard that before and was curious.
 
haruhiko said:
Due to the Find My capabilities?
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From my testing, yes it appears to be the case. I've tried to remove them from my Find My account, and you can do it if you hide the Airpods from being detected, but the minute you use them again they're added right back to the Find My account. There's no way to turn it off completely.
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DevinNj said:
Your original statement was that they were designed to kill the battery, just wondering where that tidbit of info came from. I'd never heard that before and was curious.
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They're not designed specifically to kill the battery. They're designed to work in a way that does kill the battery much much quicker than normal. Draining the battery constantly even when not in use and not giving the user a means for stopping it from happening is awful design. And again, it's why AirPods batteries are at 40-50 percent capacity after a year or two of use.
 
RickGrimes said:
I can think of a 3 letter word from which they pulled it. Most of their posts in this thread are nonsense.
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Prove me wrong. You can't. Because guess who agrees with me? Yep, Apple support are the ones who verified the behavior I was seeing was normal.
 
Herrpod said:
Not to scare you, but Airpods are basically designed to kill the battery ASAP.
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They're not "designed" that way.

Herrpod said:
They're not designed specifically to kill the battery. They're designed to work in a way that does kill the battery much much quicker than normal. Draining the battery constantly even when not in use and not giving the user a means for stopping it from happening is awful design. And again, it's why AirPods batteries are at 40-50 percent capacity after a year or two of use.
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You do realize even though there may not be audio going in/out doesn't mean they're not in use? There are processes going on in the background like listening for Siri, or the Find MY services as stated earlier. This will cause battery discharge because it is in use doing as intended. There is a difference between discharge and degradation, which is a decrease in battery performance, and any battery will do this over time. Nothing about Airpods battery capacity/capability is unusual, unnatural, as you say awful in design. Those people who get 2-3 hours of use after 2 years is still very acceptable usage.
 
DevinNj said:
They're not "designed" that way.



You do realize even though there may not be audio going in/out doesn't mean they're not in use? There are processes going on in the background like listening for Siri, or the Find MY services as stated earlier. This will cause battery discharge because it is in use doing as intended. There is a difference between discharge and degradation, which is a decrease in battery performance, and any battery will do this over time. Nothing about Airpods battery capacity/capability is unusual, unnatural, as you say awful in design. Those people who get 2-3 hours of use after 2 years is still very acceptable usage.
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There's absolutely no reason to not be able to turn off Find MY if I dont want to use it in order to save battery. And there's no reason it should be listening for Siri when it's in the case. The amount of battery drain I, and many others on many forums discussing AirPods, am seeing is excessive. So yes, if they were designed to constantly drain the battery, then yes they WERE designed to be that way. But I'm done having a battle of semantics with you. The fact remains that if they were designed to constantly be using FIND MY even when in a case, then they were absolutely designed to constantly drain the battery.
 
RickGrimes said:
Burden of proof is on you. Apple support pulls things outta their 3 letter word too.
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What more proof do I need other than the countless battery threads here, on Apple Official forums, and reddit's AirPods forum? What more proof do I need than actually using these things for years and seeing the same behavior. If anything, prove yours don't exhibit this behavior. I won't hold my breath, because you can't. This is how they're designed to work, and that's fine if you know it going in. It's those of us who didn't know it and were worried that we had faulty AirPods because they kept draining when not in use.
 
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