This is the best summary I could come up with:
Fairphone has spent years showing us that it could do what major phone manufacturers suggest is impossible: make a modern-looking phone, make it brazenly easy to open up, design it so battery swaps are something you could do on lunch break, and also provide software support for an unbelievable eight to 10 years.
Bluetooth headphones, specifically wireless earbuds, seemed destined to never receive this kind of eco-friendly, ownership-oriented upgrade, in large part because of how small they are.
The firm previously made the since-discontinued True Wireless Stereo Earbuds and still offers Fairbuds XL, which are not buds at all but full over-ear headphones (and also EU-only).
Taylor Dixon took apart six buds for iFixit back in 2020, and only Sony’s WF-1000XM3 didn’t require soldering, cutting and re-applying glue, and a steady hand working in very small spaces.
Even if Apple gets some kind of material out of the AirPods, a lot of them (and nearly every other wireless earbud) end up as waste after 18 months or however long their batteries last.
Fairbuds may or may not take a big chunk out of the market for AirPods, Beats, Pixel Buds, or other use-and-toss airbuds.
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dunidane@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
EU only but it is an awesome idea. Hope I can eventually try it out.