Apple kills off the popular Beats Pill+ Bluetooth speaker

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Beats Pill+
Beats Pill+ (Image credit: Beats)

What you need to know

  • Apple has discontinued the Beats Pill+ Bluetooth speaker.
  • The Bluetooth speaker originally sold for $229.
  • The speaker can't be bought from Apple but some third-party retailers might still have stocks hanging around.

Apple appears to have discontinued the popular Beats Pill+ Bluetooth speaker, a product that was first announced in October of 2015. At the time the speaker sold for $229 and features a 12-hour battery with charging taken care of by a Lightning port. There was even a USB-A port for charging your phone, too.

Now, more than six years later, it's probably that USB-A port that contributed to the speaker's downfall — modern iPhones ship with USB-C cables in the box, after all.

Here's what Beats had to say about its new speaker in the original press release:

Design - With its clean and sophisticated design, Beats Pill+ speaker looks as good as it sounds. Compact and durable enough to throw in your bag, the Beats Pill+ is designed to go wherever you do. Convenient button controls are now at the top of the speaker so you can manage your music with ease.Power management - The Beats Pill+ speaker has a 12-hour battery life to stay charged on the go. The lightning cable and power supply provide a quick full charge in just 3 hours. Keep track of your power levels with the fuel gauge so you always know how much battery is left and use the USB port to charge out.

While Apple is no longer selling the product it could well be available via third-party retailers so anyone desperate to add one to their collection might have some success there. Apple hasn't announced any replacement for the Beats Pill+ speaker, but there are plenty of Bluetooth speakers on the market for customers to choose from.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.