airpods – stlplace

My AirPods Pro 1st Gen came back to life?

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(Update 06-30-2025) After a bit back and forth, the current status: the right AirPod has 18% battery, the left – zero. Will hang on for a bit (charing etc.) before finally ditching it to the local Apple Store 🙂

(Update 06-24-2025) It seems the battery didn’t last long. Out of battery after about 30 mins or so usage. I will continue monitoring.

(Orinigal 06-23-2025) 我用AirPods 和在eBay上卖一些小东西以来，可能最不可思议的一件事。Most incredible thing happened to my AirPods Pro 1st Gen, and in my 20 years eBay selling journey. Let me elaborate below.

Today I decided to try the “returned case” with the AirPods Pro 1st Gen that I left at home. First I charged the case and the AirPods. And then I used it with my iPhone 16, and it worked! My phone says “(my old daughter’s 1stst name)’s AirPods Pro”.

Are we talking about Headless chicken 🐓 or dead cat 🐈 bounce?

AirPods, top to bottom, Pro 1st gen, 3 and 4

Death Sentence

I sold the case via eBay in Apr 2025, as I cannot make the AirPods to work. So I thought the AirPods is already dead due to the age. I tried to charge the AirPods a few times, but it couldn’t connect to the phone after charing. Before all that we were visiting China (summer 2024), and I did recall sometimes my wife would take this away from her. And my wife may have left the AirPods Pro 1st Generation in her drawer for a long time. I am mildly annoyed by my wife policing our older daughter’s AirPods usage, if leaving it in her drawer accelerated the death, obviously I wasn’t happy, but probably at the same time I don’t want to fight my wife on this. There is this slogan: there are something in life money cannot buy; for everything else, there is MasterCard.

Now I think about it, perhaps leave it in the dust for a long time, may have helped the battery to come back to life? I know rechargeable batteries are not as predicable as the mechanical counterpart. Note I recycled my 1st AirPods at the Apple West County store. Since last year or 2, I am beefing up the eBay side business, and I was thinking maybe I can just sell the case because I assume the case is good.

You may refer to this post here Lost my AirPods Pro. Quoted below.

I paid $159.87 for Apple AirPods Pro (series number: SH36DK17G0C6L) at Amazon on November 25, 2020, and I just saw it’s $219.99 on Amazon now.

I am not sad. The AirPods pro is about 2 years old. Typical life span for AirPods is about 2 to 3 years. The pro has two advantage that my AirPods 3 doesn’t have: 1) It can connect to my old MacBook Pro (late 2012 model); 2) It has noise cancellation. For the latter I have this Anker SoundCore headset.

Customer Return

But the customer complained it didn’t work, after he received the item. Note I could not verify it end to end before ship it. Fortunately I asked for the case back this time. Nowadays normally I let customers keep the merchandise and I would still issue the refund. This time I was a bit curious regarding why the case didn’t work for the customer. Now I think it’s likely due to the fact I didn’t remove the AirPods from my Apple account or resetting the device. Again I am not 100% sure. I did google search, and I recall I removed the AirPods Pro 1st Generation from all my iOS and Mac devices.

Earlier I talked about AirPods Pro 1st gen here as well. Let me copy some stuff over:

1st Generation AirPods Pro: purchased Nov 25, 2020, on Amazon. Died and trying to sell the case on eBay now). Update 04-13-2025: sold the case on eBay.

Now at least I can use this pair of AirPods as the spare AirPods in my car: just like we have spare tire in the car, now we have spare AirPods too 🙂

AirPods: revisited

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AirPods 3 about to die now?

It seems like it, as I noticed it started to drop connections a few times last few days (need to observe more to make sure). I recall my old 1st Gen AirPods does this a lot when it was near the end of its life. AirPods usually has 2 to 3 years of useful life, per refurb.me

I ordered it via Chase Ultimate Rewards on Nov 12, 2022. I spent15,643 Points (that’s $156.43 if we assume 100 points for 1 dollar, and this is after tax).

Assume I started using it right away, which was very likely, as I recall I got a bit tired of my then AirPods Pro gen 1. So basically, I already got 2.5 years of usage out of it.

AirPods I have owned personally

1st Generation AirPods (died and recycled at Apple store West County) – I probably bought it in year 2018. I was stunned by its seamless switching between iPhone and MacBook. I bought it after seeing a friend wearing it and he said it’s good. He didn’t lie 🙂 || I bought a similar one for my wife on Feb 16, 2020, at Amazon. Why are hers still working? Note I worn this thing quite a bit when I was working for the Mastercard, because a lot of times I don’t want to be disturbed (I sit at a corner cubicle), both for legit disturbance (people walking by or talking), or I just want peace. Later on I realized this is a hack I can deploy more because if I put on AirPods (even without listening to anything), sometimes people will assume I was on a call or listening to something, so that they won’t bother me.

1st Generation AirPods Pro: purchased Nov 25, 2020, on Amazon. Died and trying to sell the case on eBay now). Update 04-13-2025: sold the case on eBay.

2nd Generation AirPods Pro (current in use): bought at Costco U City store in year 2024.

AirPods 3 (seems about to die): as I said above, I bought it from the Chase Ultimate Rewards Apple store. || Update 04-10-2025: not sure about the “about to die” part, but it sometimes would act weird, basically the sound would be like the cassette player ran out of battery when I listened to a song on iPhone (YT Music). I used AirPods 3 for pairing with Windows Laptop too – while the integration between AirPods and Windows is not as smooth as the Mac, now I realized it has one advantage too. Let me explain, AirPods will switch between Mac and iPhone automatically, so for example, I was listening to music on iPhone, and I sit before the Mac Mini (my desktop), and open a browser and it has some video or audio playing, the AirPods would automatically switch – which was not my intension. This won’t happen (the automatic switching) between iPhone and Windows.

AirPods 4 (my 15-year-old has it): bought from Amazon on Dec 5, 2024.

Last but not least: please make sure turn on “Find My” for your AirPods: if you haven’t done so yet.

PS:

The AirPods are mostly made in Vietnam now. Apple may or may not raise the price of AirPods due to the new tariff (46%).