Airpods flaky bluetooth? where they rushed out?

1. Briefly below zero. 2. An airplane of course. No wonder others respond negatively to your comments. The point is that the BT on the Powerbeats3 is superb. Definitely better than anything else I've ever used, though tied with Bose QC35. Obviously better than described here for the AirPods, which appear to have been released prematurely.

If you were on an airplane then you really weren't using them at 30,000 feet, pressurization for most commercial flights would be at around 7,000 feet so you were will within the operating constraints of the device. It is not a good idea to assume anything as we have had people here who go up into mountainous areas and use (or not use as the case may be) their devices. The BT on my Powerbeats 3, as well as the battery life is very good but I did have them do a shutdown at 4 degrees while using them as others have also have happen. Apparently at some temperature not shown by Apple (they don't even show the operating range for them) the PowerBeats are programmed to shut down as at cold temperatures Lithium polymer batteries become erratic and will eventually stop working.

I have also had short interruptions in BT with the Powerbeats 3 and the AirPods but all of these instances have been when connected to my iPhone. When connected to my computer it does not happen. The interruption is very brief. Do you have the AirPods?

I should simply have said that I have used them on airplanes. Also, you are right that any product cannot operate very long at such low temperatures. Again, my main point is for the person considering waiting for a Beats product similar to AirPods is that Beats have excellent Bluetooth, at least on the ones with a wire between the two sides. I spent $200 on the Powerbeats3. I am certainly not going to waste $160 on AirPods two months later. The sound is great, the internal battery lasts 12 hours and the Bluetooth is fantastic. No need to change. I might reconsider someday, but not until Apple fixes the many problems AirPods have, as evidenced on this and many other forums. Not ready for primetime.

I've been using my AirPods the entire time I have been responding to you and even before that. No Bluetooth dropouts whatsoever today. Remember the people who come here usually have a problem. To use the stale analogy, it is like an alien visiting a hospital and on that basis deciding all humans are very sick.

I'm not sure why you have the impression that I doubted you are having issues and I'm glad Apple is responding. I pointed out I did have some dropout issues with my iPhone. But I was responding to the other poster who has the PB3 and not the AirPods. I've been using BT headphones for some time and have several models I would notice the dropouts you are describing.

Practically the exact same behavior I have experienced with my AirPods. They are almost unusable for phone calls on my iPhone 6s Plus. When they work, they sound beautiful. When they fail, they are an annoying mess. I have had issues where one just stops working midway through a call.

I have some cheap $20 bluetooth headphones that work better for phone calls. They never experience drop outs, even when I am out running.

I think there might be something to interacting with the iPhone leading to the issue. I have experienced selecting an app and having the AirPods "pop". Curious if it is CPU load or file system access based.

I hope those AirPod stuttering issue is not related to iPhone's intel chip Bluetooth issue. There's another thread discussing it, so basically GSM iPhone 7 with intel chipset are having really poor Bluetooth performance, if that's the case then it's really an iPhone hardware issue..

Well, my good fortune didn't last forever - later in the day, with the Watch still off, I experienced some dropouts.

Perhaps the frequency of dropouts is reduced, but not eliminated, with the Watch off. So perhaps potential more than one source for the dropouts.

I have an idea. Are any of you using an iPhone 7 or 7 plus with AT&T? Try turning off your LTE radios and see if the problem stops. I do not think it's your AirPods.

If anyone tries this can you report back here with your findings?

Same issue here. When listening to music all seems well however when using the airpods for calls I am getting dropouts every few minutes. Very frustrating. I am using an iphone 6s and also have a first generation apple watch that I use every day.

Tried troubleshooting this with Apple Support and seemed to have isolated the problem - turning off cellular data makes it stop I think. Must be some problem with interference between the BT and cellular chips or antennas, or maybe the W1 chip is susceptible to cellular interference. Or maybe this batch of AirPods just have manufacturing defects.

In response to turning off LTE (settings, cellular, cellular data options), I did not experience any bluetooth skipping during audio usage (8-9 hours). Battery seemed to be good using phone and MacBook audio, but I'm still testing it. I turned LTE back on to confirm findings and I did experience skipping within a few minutes and turned it back off. It seemed as though battery life was different (90% drop in 40 minutes) after turning LTE on/off, specifically when using cellular phone audio. I removed all parings, powered down Apple Watch and re-paired AirPods to see if battery life increases on phone audio tomorrow.

Despite the issues, they are a great product.

Yeah. I feel like the first week or two was perfect, then I started getting frequent drop outs when listening to music. I also get interference when having more than one person on a call. It's weird. I also have the issue when using my phone (changing apps, browsing safari, etc).

Hope they send out a firmware fix or something soon. I want to keep these things.

Here's my experience. Stutter seems to be greatly reduced when not controlling music with Apple Watch. Watch Series 2, 6S and AirPods are all operating together stutter and skipping is more pronounced.