I've got a pair of Samsung Galaxy Buds I bought about 2 years ago, and recently they're only lasting like 2-3 hours instead of the usual 6-7 hours per charge. I've tried resetting them and cleaning the charging contacts, but nothing seems to help. Is this just battery degradation or could something else be going on?
Battery degradation at the 2-year mark is definitely the main suspect, but I'd also check whether your phone's Bluetooth settings might be forcing the buds to work harder than necessary - sometimes aggressive codec settings or constant reconnection attempts will tank your battery life. If you've got developer options available, you can actually see how often they're reconnecting and switching between devices. One more thing worth trying: disable ambient sound or noise cancellation if you use it, since those features eat through the battery surprisingly fast on older buds.
The most likely culprit after two years is battery degradation, but before you assume they're done for, check whether the charging case itself might be the problem. If the case battery is dying, it won't fully charge your buds even if they're fine. Try charging the case for a full cycle and see if that makes a difference. Also look at your Bluetooth settings - if your phone is searching for other devices or if the buds are connected to multiple devices simultaneously, that drains the battery faster than normal use.
Beyond that, there are a few settings worth checking. Some earbuds have noise cancellation or ambient sound modes that consume significantly more power, so if you've been using those more lately, that could explain the drop. The same goes for codec settings on Samsung devices - higher-quality audio codecs like SSC (Samsung Scalable Codec) drain the battery quicker than standard ones. You can switch to a lower-quality codec in your phone's Bluetooth settings and see if that helps.
If none of that works, you're probably looking at genuine battery degradation. Lithium batteries in earbuds degrade over time and with charge cycles, and two years of regular use is around where you'd expect to see noticeable decline. At that point your options are basically replacing the battery if Samsung offers that service, trying a factory reset through their app if you haven't already, or accepting that they've had a decent lifespan. Some people have had luck with letting the buds fully drain and then doing a complete recharge cycle, though it's a longshot.
After two years with lithium batteries, you're almost certainly dealing with chemical wear - those cells lose capacity over time, no way around it. That said, I had something similar happen with an old pair and discovered the case wasn't holding charge properly anymore, which meant the buds weren't getting fully topped up between uses, so I'd think they were dying faster than they actually were. Have you checked whether the case itself still holds a full charge for multiple cycles, or does it seem to drain weirdly fast too?
One thing worth trying before accepting battery death is checking whether Bluetooth is staying connected to multiple devices at once - if your buds are pairing with your phone, tablet, and laptop simultaneously, they'll drain faster because they're constantly scanning for connections. Beyond that, capacity loss at two years is real and expected with lithium cells, but what the others haven't mentioned is that Samsung buds specifically can develop firmware issues that tank battery life; a factory reset through the Galaxy Wearable app (not just the physical reset) sometimes helps recover performance that degradation alone wouldn't explain. If that doesn't work, the case battery could genuinely be failing too, which means the buds aren't getting proper top-ups between uses - so test by fully charging the case overnight and seeing if the buds hold their stated capacity for the full charge cycle without topping up mid-day.
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