iPhone 12 Mini 1st Gen AirPods connection issue

Hi,

I am very sorry to bother people here at the Apple Community Support, but I was wondering if anyone has had this same issue.

An iPhone 12 Mini I have been using has an unusual problem. If I connect my 1st generation AirPods to it, it drops connection with the left earpiece within a minute. I have paired them again a few times and the AirPods are fully charged. They work fine with my Series 6 Apple Watch, and iPad Pro 12.9 2020. The same thing happens every time. I connect the AirPods with the Mini, then go to Apple Music and start playing something. A few minutes later, the left earpiece gets disconnected, and the volume in the right earpiece also gets low and you can’t turn it up beyond the level it drops too. the iPhone Mini is running the latest software and there are no further updates available at this time.

I only have one pair the 1st gen AirPods (which still work very well and I really like them). I don’t think the AirPods are faulty because the same problem does not happen when I use them with the other products I mentioned. Sometimes it loses connection with both earpieces and when it picks it up again it is just the right hand one.

Other than pairing again and disconnecting Bluetooth for a few minutes, I have also tried to switch the phone off and wait a few minutes to try again.

I so have another set of wireless earphones which I am charging right now so I could check if the Bluetooth on the phone is working properly. If people here cannot resolve the AirPod connection issues, please advise me how I could check if the Bluetooth of my phone is not faulty. I don’t have any other Apple AirPods, though. I do have a set of Sony wireless earphones.

Any advice or help would be met with gratitude. To make things easier, please do not ask me to try the things I have already done. I have already checked the battery on the phone and the AirPods is 100%. I have disconnected them for several hours, paired them again a number of times and have even shut down the phone twice to see if the problem would be resolved, but these things have not worked. I have been using my AirPods with my iPad Pro for at least half an hour now and they seem to have no connection problems, so I wonder why the IPhone 12 Mini is having this issue.