JBL / Soundcore / Bose apps keep disconnecting on my iPhone 13 mini (iOS 18.7.2) — works fine on another iPhone with iOS 26 🤔

Hey everyone,

I’ve been dealing with a really strange issue and wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this.

I own an iPhone 13 mini running iOS 18.7.2, and I’ve tested several Bluetooth headphones with it — JBL Live 770 NC, Sony WH-1000XM4, Soundcore Q45, Bose, and Beats Solo 4 / Studio Pro.

Here’s the weird part:

When I use their companion apps (JBL Headphones, Soundcore, or Bose Music), the app keeps disconnecting and reconnecting repeatedly while I’m inside the app.

The Sony Headphones Connect app is the only one that works perfectly without any dropouts — and of course, the Beats ones are kind of integrated with iPhone settings, like other Apple products.

Audio playback over Bluetooth is totally fine — it’s just the app-level control connection that keeps breaking.

I’ve already tried resetting network settings, forgetting/re-pairing devices, reinstalling apps, and even disabling background app refresh. None of it helped.

Then, I tested my JBL Live 770 NC on another phone — an iPhone 16 running iOS 26 — and everything worked flawlessly there. No disconnects at all.

So now I’m wondering if this is some sort of Bluetooth LE / BLE communication bug in iOS 18.x on older Bluetooth 5.0 chipsets (like the one in the iPhone 13 mini), or just an app-specific issue.

Has anyone else run into this?

Did updating to iOS 26 fix it for you?

Any other workarounds besides the usual “reset network settings” trick?

Thanks in advance — this one’s been driving me crazy 😅