The new AirPods-like design of the Samsung Buds 3 Pro turns out to be very repairable, leaving Apple with no excuse
Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 3 Pro earbuds get a new design this year that closely resembles Apple’s AirPods Pro 2. But they differ from Apple’s Pro earbuds in one key way: They’re “extremely easy” to take apart and potentially repair, according to a repair specialist.
If i’ll fix it say, AirPods Pro 2 repairs fall firmly into “don’t try this at home” territory, largely due to “incredible amounts of adhesive”; Apple’s earbuds are among the “most irreparable” and if you remove the battery “the driver is toast.” But Samsung thankfully doesn’t appear to have copied that part of Apple’s design.
The news comes via Canadian vlogger Phone Repair Guru on YouTubewho takes apart the new Samsung earbuds to see how their repairability compares to Apple’s. As he says, “most of these end up in the landfill when the battery finally dies.” But these earbuds appear to be better and could potentially last a lot longer.
Can you easily repair the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro?
The first item Phone Repair Guru attempted to replace was the battery, which proved tricky with the AirPods Pro case. Samsung’s case doesn’t have the same “crazy” adhesive, and you can see in the video that it’s relatively easy to open it up and swap out the case’s battery – though that does raise questions about how effective the claimed water resistance really is.
As for the earbuds themselves, the video shows that the internals of the earbuds are similar to those of the AirPods Pro. Swapping out the battery requires unsoldering, and the battery is about the same size as the one in Apple’s earbuds. “It’s not nearly as difficult to remove the battery as it is with the AirPods,” he says. “These are much more repairable than the AirPods Pro: they may look similar, but they’re definitely not repairable like them.”
It’s important to note that repairing these earbuds still requires specialized equipment, albeit one that’s readily available, and you’ll need to be fairly skilled to pull it off. But it seems that Samsung, for one, is paying attention to the growing calls for greater right-to-repair legislation in countries around the world and is building its earbuds with third-party repair in mind, so you may just be able to get the batteries swapped out at a local repair shop.
One of the biggest places where legislation around improving repairability is on the horizon is the European Union, where Apple will make its iPhone batteries more removable starting in 2025. Presumably, the next-generation AirPods Pro will take a cue from Samsung this time around, rather than the other way around. As iFixit puts it, “Repairability is within reach, and it might make the future sound even sweeter.”
In our Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro review, we noted that the new earbuds also have an issue with the eartips easily becoming damaged when you remove them… but at least those are a lot easier to fix since you can just get new ones (and Samsung has promised to improve quality after a delay in Buds 3 Pro shipping dates).
