Apple will charge £65 to replace one of its easily loseable AirPods

The tiny earbuds went on sale this week for £159

Andrew Griffin
Friday 16 December 2016 11:21 EST
Comments
Apple AirPods are displayed during a media event in San Francisco, California, U.S. September 7, 2016
Apple AirPods are displayed during a media event in San Francisco, California, U.S. September 7, 2016 (REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Apple will charge £69 to replace one of its new earphones.

The company's tiny, wireless new headphones were released this week and are being hailed as a leap forward for the technology. But those same features mean that they are easily lost – they are small and light, and there's no simple way of finding out where they are if they go missing.

Apple has now confirmed what it will do if that does happen. It will sell people a new AirPod for £65, it said, and it will replace the charging case that they come in for the same price.

Though the AirPods all work independent of one another, they need to go in their case to work. They can only be charged through that case and it's through that they are connected to the phone in the first place.

The company will service the battery in one of the AirPods or its case for £45. But they will have a normal, one-year warranty, so any issues in that period will be fixed for free.

Apple doesn't have any easy way of finding the small white earbuds if they do go missing. There is no "Find My iPhone" tool like those offered for other products like the Apple Watch, for instance, and so it means looking for the white EarPods themselves.

But some have suggested there's less chance that they'll actually go missing in the first place, since they are smaller and lighter and because they lack any wires at all they could be less likely to get snagged onto a piece of clothing and go flying.

The AirPods went on sale this week after a long delay that Apple said it needed to get them ready. They feature a tiny chip embedded in each of their separate earbuds, which means that they know when they are being put into a person's ear, and can sense when they are being tapped on the side and use that to bring up Siri.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in