Somebody has a problem with their particular HA’s and that’s reason to claim in general that rechargeables can’t last 6 years? As I said above, Tesla batteries last 4,500 rechargings with battery management and the latest and greatest battery chemistry. That’s 12.3 years of use if you went through the equivalent of one full recharging a day but Quattro’s actually can hold about 2 days of use in a full charge so with good battery management and Tesla quality battery chemistry, rechargeable HA batteries might last 25 years.
My Surface Pro 2 will soon be 8 years old. It has 92% of its battery capacity left, at least, and will be good for at least another 8 years. It’s using 2013 battery technology.
To successfully store Li-ion batteries and not have to think about it, you just apply battery management software in storage, too. You plug in the charger and put the HA’s in the charger but the software is smart enough to maintain both any charger battery and any HA’s with a narrow range of optimum charge, e.g., the charging case and the HA’s in storage, let’s say, are kept between 40% and 50% charge while not being used. If one had wireless OTA charging, you wouldn’t have to plug anything in.
You would have to live in a reasonably controlled temperature (and humidity environment) but most Westerners prefer to live in the 70 deg to 80 deg F (21.1 to 26.7 deg C). (Elon Musk is said to have joked that a Tesla battery will never die in Alaska!). For a relative perspective, here’s a 2019 article on Tesla’s Battery Management System(BMS), which mentions phone battery management in comparison (and surface-to-volume ratio and passive conductive cooling): Why do Tesla batteries not overheat? Tesla’s battery cooling system. - Easy Electric Cars
And someone goes out and buys Phonak Paradise HA’s and a Roger Select, etc., then complains that any modest additional cost for rechargeable HA’s is killing them?! Or first, they try Marvels and then have to have the latest and greatest and switch to Paradise’s? Too bad for folks whose wallets are so fat an expensive Paradise HA and Roger Select is no problem but a little bit more cash for a rechargeable is the end of the world.
The real problem is lack of inventiveness and resourcefulness on the part of HA OEM’s. They don’t have the technological umphh to get down to 5 nm processes, for example, nor do they put the thought into rechargeable battery management software (e.g., Apple’s optimized recharging protocol is a bridge too far for them…). A three-year HA warranty is not exactly the 500,000 mile warranty that you get with a Tesla vehicle. So maybe the HA industry just needs its own Elon Musk? When the smartphone industry is pushing 5 nm processes, look how backward the HA industry is in preserving a super-expensive behind the times oligopoly with political lobbying to try to discourage release of OTC HA’s. When NuHeara can sell a pair of HA’s for $600 and it’s said the wholesale price of the average premium HA is actually around $300 to $400, HA OEM’s could afford to offer 2 to 3 pairs of HA’s to a user during a 6-year use period for a $4,700 average cost for a premium HA pair (even more pairs if you’re paying $6 to $7K - and with generous trialing and replacement policies during the warranty, perhaps we’re already paying for those extra pairs in the initial purchase cost???).
I think the problem is not specifically rechargeables. It’s the HA industry in general as a fat-cat medically-restricted device industry that makes everything super-expensive and not easily replaceable because of the costs involved. Samsung can sell you its Galaxy Buds Pro with charging case for $150. Misuse of ear buds could damage your ears for sure. And, of course, crummy product manufacturer that Samsung is, it spends $0 on product research and development! C’mon, lawmakers, we need to regulate the earbud industry to make it super-expensive and slow down the pace of earbud development enough that HA OEM’s could get in on that game, too… Consider by comparison all the tech that you get in an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max for $1,400. If the HA industry could operate on the global scale of an Apple or a Samsung or Huawei, maybe we’d have less expensive devices with the latest technology in every part of the devices.