My iPhone X has problems with audio

On December 25, 2022 I was walking outside listening to a Beatles album I had downloaded just an hour before, and I felt great. I was using the old Apple earbuds because I prefer them over the new ones, using a lightning adapter because I think there should be a headphone port but there isn't so I have to make a compromise which is ok most of the time.

Anyway, the first few songs played really well, but then the audio started cutting out. This had happened with me in the past whenever I moved around, likely because it made the audio connection not as strong, so I didn't think it was unexpected. But then I took a break to sit down and the audio continued to cut out every few seconds. It wasn't quite regular, but it would happen with some consistency every time music was playing. I double-checked Apple Music to make sure the album had fully downloaded properly, and according to the app, it had. I then tried listening to something that I had downloaded from over a year before that I listened to often, but it had the same issue. I figured that my earbuds were doing that as a part of Apple's new "planned obsolescence" model so I checked the Apple support forums to see if someone had had a similar issue. I didn't really find anything, so I just decided to let it sit for a while and the problem had seemingly resolved itself by the next day. It's good to note that my iPhone had been using iOS 16.0.2 at this time.

Going forward exactly two weeks, I decided to listen to the second Beatles album. (I had updated to iOS 16.2 by this point.) This time, I was doing laundry so I was basically standing in the same place for hours. In other words, no movement here. The audio started cutting out again. I decided to try and fix the issue by first turning my phone off then back on by pressing volume up, volume down and then holding power, but that didn't work. Then I tried logging out of my Apple ID on my iPhone and then logging back in and the situation seemed to improve.

Fast-forward to late January this year, and the audio starts cutting out again. By this time, past me has been able to figure out that whenever I watch new videos on YouTube or listen to new music on Apple Music (or any other place for that matter) without a WiFi connection, it starts cutting out on the audio. This notably happens even when I have a very strong cell signal, and I have checked over a hundred times due to various issues over the past year that "Cellular Downloads" and "listening using cell data" are both turned to on. For some reason, my phone gives preferential treatment to WiFi over Cell signal even though I am constantly in places with bad or otherwise restrictive WiFi 88.69048% of the time (all but 19 hours of the week), and thus want it to prefer cell signal all the time, no matter what.

This problem has continued into early February and I experienced it this morning using one of the new sets of Apple headphones since I lost my other pair. I thought it was odd but at least I was finally able to pinpoint where the issue had come from: the phone itself, not the headphones.

Does anyone know how to fix the problem of audio cutting out? If anyone has tips on resolving the issue, that would be much appreciated.

Thank you in advance,

Keenan