To the dismay of many iPhone 7 and 7 Plus owners, Apple delayed the launch of its AirPods from October to December, supposedly saying that it was “finalizing” the product. This could mean a number of things, such as production or yield problems, but perhaps the company should have pushed the launch back further because some buyers of the AirPods are complaining about serious battery drain issues.
AirPods supposed to offer 24 hours of charge
The AirPods come with a charging case that’s supposed to help keep them charged for longer periods of time so that they don’t have to be constantly hooked to a charger. Apple advertises the charging case as offering an additional 24 hours of charge, but it didn’t take long for some users to notice that they’re not getting anywhere near that. The AirPods themselves are supposed to offer up to five hours of charge and be able to charge quickly, gaining back three hours of battery life in only 15 minutes of charging.
Some Reddit users are now reporting that the AirPods case loses charge quickly—in some cases by more than 40% in a matter of hours. Meanwhile the AirPods sit at full charge inside the case. Most users also report that they aren’t even activated for Bluetooth use, which means that there shouldn’t be any reason that the case is losing battery power so quickly.
Also most users who are experiencing the battery drain issue are finding the problem to be only with the charging case and not with the AirPods themselves.
Not all charging cases are faulty
Reddit user severinskulls is one of those who experienced this issue, and he managed to get his AirPods replaced. Further, the replacement he received didn’t come with a faulty charging case. Instead, he says that it works as Apple advertised. The Redditor said upon his first connection with Apple Support, the representative had no idea how long the case would last when the devices are not in use.
This isn’t the only Apple device being struck by battery drain issues right now. Recently some iPhone users discovered that the newest versions of iOS caused their smartphone to suddenly lose all charge upon reaching a 30% charge. With iOS 10.2 the issue appeared to have become worse and more widespread, and it was made worse by Apple’s decision to stop signing the prior versions of iOS.
It seems likely that the company was trying to keep jailbreakers from successfully freeing iPhones from the newest version of iOS because when it stops signing prior versions, it prevents users from being able to roll back to them so that they can jailbreak. However, moving so quickly on this meant many iPhone users were trapped on iOS 10.2 with a device that had serious battery drain issues.
