LED lamp

I've been upgrading my home light to LEDs over the years, at this point I think I don't have any incandescent light in use anywhere. Earlier I replaced quite a few incandescents with CFLs, but now it's exclusively leds.

Some people claim that both CFLs and LEDs have very short life, but my anecdotal experince says otherwise. I don't remember how many CFLs have broken but I think it was countable with one hand fingers (that is, without using binary, for you nitpickers out there), and LEDs have been equally long-lived. 

So, when one dimmable one broke after nearly 10 years I wanted to take closer look. 

Led in question was Osram (reputable brand) bulb, with 4 year warrenty.  I have taken habit of writing buy date to lamps, so it's easy to check whether they are covered by warranty when they break (spoler alert: exactly one bulb of CFLs or LEDs have broken during warranty period and was refunded without questions).

It was mostly the broken white base that made me curious, but unfortunately this turned out to be false alert. After years of use the plastic had become brittle and broke very easily. Underneath "glass" (plastic too actually) is small PCB with LEDs on it, glued with some kind of thermal compound to metal base with press-fit connectors acting as LED supply prongs coming out from inside. That is quite a nice setup.

I managed to pry the top off, but at that point I stopped my examinations short. Inside is completely potted. I really didn't feel like digging in that mess, so I just gave up. I expect board to be fairly straightforward led driver board design anyway.

Someone elsewhere mentioned that these bulbs are pretty much designed to run as hot as they can. This one wasn't even high-wattage one, but that claim makes kinda twisted sense, considering what happened to this one and what I've experienced when trying to handle these just after turning them off. I think that if this was designed to run just few tens of degrees colder, it would last much, much longer yet. Too bad for planned obsolescense.