General Question

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

Uh oh, is my Beats Pill broken?

Asked by ScottyMcGeester (1897points) March 27th, 2016

I feel bad because my mom surprised me with getting this for me like two years ago. I’ve used it since but not frequently.

All of the sudden it doesn’t hold the charge. Last night I charged it being that it’s been a while since I used it. I woke up and saw that it was still charging (the light was red not green). So I was like “Damn, did it take this long to charge before?”

I unplugged it and couldn’t turn it on, even though it was supposedly charging all night long.

When I plug it in, it can still work as speakers – but now I appeared to have lost the wireless aspect of it for some reason. It just won’t turn on unless it’s plugged in.

I tried resetting it just like the official site says:
https://www.beatsbydre.com/support/troubleshooting/pill/reset-pill.html

and still nothing works.

Shit.

The worst part is I can’t return it because I threw out the box a while ago.

Crap.

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21 Answers

Seek's avatar

It may have over-drained the battery. What is the charger style? Does it happen to have a male USB end, that you can plug into a computer?

Sometimes, an over-drained battery doesn’t have enough of a charge to accept a high flow of energy from a wall outlet, but you can charge it through a secondary source, like the USB port of your computer, which and it’ll take it.

No guarantee it will work (2 years is a long time to keep a battery dormant) but it might be worth a try.

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

Na. It doesn’t come with a USB cord. I tried it actually with a cord I found that was able to make it connect to a computer and charge but it still doesn’t hold the charge. It wasn’t completely dormant for two years; I still used it. Just not enough that I remember the last time I actually used it. Probably late last year. Definitely didn’t use it this year yet.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Well, if it’s two years old you can’t return it anyway. Can you get a new battery for it? It’s acting like a messed up cell phone. Maybe take it to a cell phone dealer? They’ll help you out if they can. Or perhaps a computer store in your area.
Or get a new battery.

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

^Oh I don’t exactly mean return it like to the store my mom bought it from. Brain fart. I meant like exchange it somehow with the company itself or send it for repairs. I know that for pretty much all the video game consoles I’ve had if something crapped out I sent it to Nintendo or Sony back in the package and they fixed whatever problem it had. Didn’t matter how old they were. Then again those are video game consoles and this is different so yeah – maybe that won’t work now.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Well, just get a wireless expert to take a look. It’s most likely the battery.

XOIIO's avatar

Sounds like a dead battery to me, and it’s likely not end user replaceable without some technical know-how.

I mean, for me it would be fairly straightforward to open it up, find what size battery it needs, order it and put it in and voila, all set.

But hey if you plan on tossing it out mail it up to me lol.

jca's avatar

Maybe the charger is broken. I understand the light on the charger is working but that doesn’t mean it’s not broken. Try borrowing a charger or buy a new charger and see how that works.

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

Ah man this just went from bad to worse.

So after figuring the battery is messed up as per all your responses, I just hooked it up to the outlet and used the audio cable it came with to connect directly to the computer. I picked a nice spot for it too under my monitor.

Well, after turning off my computer and coming back on the next day, the Beats Pill suddenly doesn’t do anything. My computer doesn’t detect it as being plugged in the audio jack. Nothing. Nothing happens. The bluetooth even stopped recognizing it as a wireless stereo. It’s like the problem got progressively worse as time went on. Now the Beats Pill is useless – it just turns on and off when plugged into an outlet and that’s it.

Fuck this shit.

I was going to try opening it up but there’s no discernible place where you can open it. There’s no opening mechanism or screw – it’s completely sealed.

OH WAIT. literally just googled anyway and found a guide on how to pry it open. I’ll try changing the battery then. Looks like I’ll have to hunt down the right type.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Well, let us know!

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

@Dutchess_III
So I had time to sit down and try to do the extensive procedure when I realized the directions I had were for Beats Pill 1.0. I have Beats Pill 2.0.

Soooo crap. I can’t find any guide on how to replace the battery on a Beats Pill 2.0

And apparently it hasn’t been 2 years yet. For some reason my perception of it was that I had it for longer. My mom suspected that I wasn’t using my Beats Pill lately (jesus christ moms have special detectors) and I said it wasn’t working well without going into detail. She wanted to find the box and said that she had got them for me in Christmas 2014.

This thing is really a piece of crap to do this to me after just a year of having it.

I can see replacement batteries people are selling on ebay. But without knowing how to open it properly it’s useless for now.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Send us a picture @ScottyMcGeester! All sides and all angles!

jca's avatar

Good to know Beats is crap. Will make sure I never purchase one. I read reviews a while back and I read that the sound quality of them is shit. I guess it’s just a novelty that it’s Dr. Dre.

XOIIO's avatar

@jca You needed a review to figure that out? :p

I’d guess that rubber bit at the base might be a good place to start getting into it.

Just found this actually which confirms it.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Thanks for the vidwo @XOIIO. That doesn’t look so difficult.

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

SO COMPLETE TURN OF EVENTS

While I was at work Mom ended up figuring it out herself and guess what? Now it works. She found the instruction manual on the Internet and just followed that, which is weird because it’s just the same reset directions I followed anyway. But whatever. She tested it on her laptop and now it’s fine. It took a while for the green light to appear but today it did. So it fully charged and she was able to play it wirelessly on her laptop.

I then connected it on my desktop. There were still a few kinks that got me aggravated and thought it wasn’t gonna work but now it is working.

Weird.

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

ok. Shit.

It’s still acting weird.

This time whenever I play a youtube video or video file on my computer, the audio doesn’t quite sync with the video. It’s like a couple seconds lagging.

Then when I try to play iTunes – it crackles and screeches and then goes silent. Also every time I close it now I get a message saying “One or more applications are using the iTunes scripting interface. Are you sure you want to quit?” Wtf? Is there like some conflict going on now?

Ugh

Gonna see if restarting my computer might help, as cliche as that sounds.

Dutchess_III's avatar

LOL! Moms are usually smarter than the kids want to give them credit for!

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

restarting my computer didn’t help.

Dutchess_III's avatar

I don’t know anything about them….but is there any way to “dump core” on it? Just wipe it clean? Like a computer?

ScottyMcGeester's avatar

I’ve already uninstalled it and reinstalled it a bunch of times. I’ve had the computer forget about it to see if it works correctly after connecting it. Still out of sync and doesn’t play iTunes songs. Lemme try not using the bluetooth.

Okay so. . it works when I use the AUX cord that it comes with. So at least I can use this as a wired connection. Something is wrong with the bluetooth connection then. I’m using an Insignia bluetooth thing connected to my computer to connect to the Beats Pill. If anyone knows anything about that that’d be great. I still get the weird iTunes notification though whenever I exit it while using the Beats Pill.

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