Bluetooth Audio Dropout Issues | iPhone 11 Pro Max and iPhone X | iOS 13 and iOS 14

I have already done all these but let me re-reply.

• Bring your Wi-Fi device closer to your Wi-Fi router. Bring the Bluetooth devices that are connecting to each other closer together. 

The phone is sitting on my desk less than three feet away so it's not a distance issue.

• Avoid using your wireless devices near common sources of interference, such as power cables, microwave ovens, fluorescent lights, wireless video cameras, and cordless phones.

This happens everywhere, at home, at the office, walking to the train station, airports. I traveled a lot for work and it happens in multiple different countries.

• Reduce the number of active devices that use the same wireless frequency band. Both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi devices use the 2.4 GHz band, but many Wi-Fi devices can use the 5 GHz band instead. If your Wi-Fi router supports both bands, it might help to connect more of your Wi-Fi devices to the 5GHz band. Some dual-band routers manage this for you automatically.

This happens with my home WiFi, office WiFi, airport WiFi, McDonalds WiFi, shopping centre Wifi, even happens when I am _not_ connected to any WiFi network.

• Configure your Wi-Fi router to use a different Wi-Fi channel, or have it scan for the channel with the least interference. Most routers perform this scan automatically on startup or when reset.

See above.

This has been happening with two different iPhone models, the iPhone X and iPhone 11 Pro Max, across two different iOS versions, 13 and 14. My phone is fully up-to-date with the latest version.

This happens with both Apple Music and Apple TV, audio skips in both. I don't have any other Bluetooth headphones, obviously wired headphones work just fine. This has been happening for over two years, ever since I bought the Sony WF-1000XM3 earphones.

The ONLY solution is to actually TURN OFF the WiFi in Settings, then the audio is uninterrupted.

P.S. I have already tried factory reset with NO RESTORE from iCloud, very painful, but it didn't help.

I have sent it back to Sony and they tested it for two days with an iPhone 8 and a Samsung Galaxy S10e, no skipping. They tried all different kinds of audio files and music sources and everything worked fine, no skipping. They didn't have an iPhone X or newer so they couldn't test with the exact same model that I have.

I have done a factory reset on the Sony earpods and it doesn't make a difference, audio still skips. Like I said, the only solution that I have found to turn OFF the WiFi on the phone, then it works just fine. So something changed in the way the iPhone does Bluetooth and WiFi between the iPhone 8 to the iPhone X and later. Apple tried to be clever, probably integrated the two wireless systems into a single chip or a single antennae and it is _just_ enough out of balance to affect the Sony earpods.

So now I have to consider should I pick earpods to suit the phone -or- do I pick the phone to suit the earpods? Sigh!

Hi, lobsterghost1,

You're probably right, I could probably find another pair of headphones that would work with my iPhone but by the same token I could find another phone that would work with my headphones. And that's the point, I didn't expect to have to test different combinations of phones/headphones for compatibilty, I thought Bluetooth would "just work".

Anyway, for now I'll just have to turn off WiFi whenever I want to listen to music without skipping. Will have to think about changing one or the other this Xmas.