easy earbud battery replacement

Here's a link that _might_ help:

Quoting part of what's posted in that linked message: "UPDATE 1/25: I replaced the batteries with these

Good luck, Ed

Are the battery terminals dirty? If an invisible film of corrosion has built up on them, it can create all sorts of fizzing noises.

The corrosion from alkaline batteries is hard, tenacious and incredibly difficult to remove if you use conventional organic solvents and cleaning agents. The magic substance, which works wonders, is water: a slightly damp cloth or cotton-wool bud softens the corrosion and wipes it away. Clean the terminals on both the battery and in the device, then make sure they are completely dry before putting the battery back in.

No, the terminals on both the new batteries and the old ones (when i put them back in) seem reasonably clean. And bluetooth is working. I can see the signal working fine on boTH sets of cells and I can even get a remaining battery per cent reading!

But still no sound.

The corrosion is invisible, so a clean-lookig terminal may still have a semi-insulating layer which is too hard to rub or scrape off without damaging the plating.

I thought the problem was fizzing noises, not no sound at all.

g First everything worked for two days after changing the battery. Then one side started to give the high pitched whine. Then the sound on that side died. completely.

During this perood of testing, I noticed that the new batteries only lasted an hour or so.

So I put the original batter daies back in. The dead side is no better but after 4-5 days, the one working side went dead. Mind you, - even when dead with no sound, bothbuds report power properly on the bt side!

Then yesterday, the sound on the working side went dead!

That definitely sounds as though they are failing and the fault might not have been the battery after all.

Yes, but it seems to be a gigantic coincidence that they both failed separately after I inserted new batteries. And one of them didn't actually die until I put back the hitherto good cell back in!

That does seem more than a coincidence but I can't come up with any obvious straightforward explanation of what could have caused it.

I am not familiar with the batteries but is it possible there are two apparently similar types which differ in voltage or polarity and you were supplied with the wrong ones? I have come across CMOS chips that were labelled wrongly, so could that have happened with the batteries?

Another possibility was that, when you changed the batteries, you were wearing a combination of artificial fibre clothes that generated large amounts of static electricity - but most modern electronic products are proof against that.

Could be earwax buildup in the buds. Builds up slowly over months at roughly the same - but not _identical_ - rate in each side. That seems to match your symptoms with the original batteries: first one dies, then after some indeterminate elapsed time the other dies with no sound but batteries measure good.

Ed

yesterday, the sound on the working side went dead!

I'm A bit unclear on how wax buildup on some external surface could in any way influence the internal electronics?

Nothing to do with the electronics. The wax blocks the small hole in the earbud where the sound comes out.

Ed