AirPods disconnects on calls

This explains why they delayed the release by 6 months. Clearly, they're still not ready, and they released too early, to save face. I'm unimpressed by the ability to hold a conversation past 5 minutes on these airpods. Going to get my $177 back.

Someone else posted about this and there's a theory that the Bluetooth connection is cutting when paired with airpods AND Apple watch.

If you are experiencing this issue and have an apple watch conneced, click on [me too]. If the numbers are high, we may have found a possible cause. I received my watch Series 2 about 2 days ago and that's when it started happenabout (didn't have any issues before)...

Good to know it's not only the original Apple Watch. Looks like it's impacting the new series Watch as well as the new iPhones. Whatever the issue ends up being it has now been revealed by the AirPods introduction.

Btw, I also had issues with my Plantronics BT headsets since the Legend UC was released by Plantronics. But for the past three years I blamed Plantronics not keeping up with Apple BT hardware. Now we know it's somehow related to BT.

I unpaired my watch, and the problems continued. So I did a full restore of my 6S via iTunes, set up as new phone, and didn't pair my watch. AirPods worked perfectly for music and several lengthy calls.

As soon as I paired my watch, the problems returned on the first call.

This repeats the results I experienced the day before yesterday. So I'd say that is very interesting.

Hey gang. I'm experiencing iPhone slow down then freezing when using AirPods occasionally. Doesn't happen often, but two instances of this happening warranted some concern. Also, noticed some interference while out & about. Again, not often, but it DID happen. This is a usual issue with bluetooth outside, and I'm aware of how that works...but I thought Apple fixed this with the W1 and Class 1 bluetooth. ****, its even happening with my PowerBeats3, and that never happened before. Starting to believe its just me and my iPhone. Have iPhone 7 Plus 256GB Gold on AT&T w/ios 10.2.

I have had the same issue with calls (cannot comment on music as I've not had my AirPods long enough to test how they perform with audio playback). On two different calls today, my AirPods disconnected and then reconnected within ~5 seconds. The first was a regular phone call (cellular), the other was a FaceTime Audio call. In the first instance, my phone (iPhone 6S Plus with iOS 10.2) was in the back pocket of my jeans. In the second instance, the phone was on the kitchen counter ~5 feet from me when I experienced the disconnect.

Disappointing. I had high hopes that Apple's famed tight integration would come through after so many third party manufacturers' headsets have exhibited the same issue. Hopefully, this will be tuned soon via a software update.

I do. I have a first generation Apple Watch. It's running watchOS 3.1; I have been unable to upgrade to watchOS 3.1.1 because when I try to do so, I get an error. Specifically, "Unable to Verify Update: The watchOS update couldn't be verified because you are not connected to the Internet." This is blatantly not true since my phone is on both WiFi and cellular, but this is the error I've been experiencing since watchOS 3.1.1 was released.

I believe watchOS 3.1.1 was pulled due to locking up some watches with an unrecoverable error. I'm not surprised that you may have the installer downloaded, but when you try to install it you get an error, perhaps not the correct error.

It seems we all have Apple Watch in common. Correlation is not causation, but that is interesting.

It is also possible I'm simply seeing degradation over time and it just happens to coincide with pairing my watch in all of my experiments (or pairing the Watch greatly accelerates arrival of the inevitable problem). Hmm.

Back to solving my own software bugs... hard to resist a puzzle though!

Agreed. Features like Handoff and Continuity are complex and Apple Watch-related aspects seem to degrade the overall ecosystem experience for me. For example, unlocking my MacBook works only intermittently, when I disable it I somehow can no longer get my iPhone to unlock my Watch automatically; and now the AirPods are possibly switching to the Watch whilst we're in the middle of phone calls via the iPhone. It's enough to make me want to chuck my Watch in a drawer for a couple of weeks.

anyone have tried or can try the latest public beta for 10.2.1?

I never had any issue on my iPhone 7...

but my wife has some problems on her 6s Plus/AirPods/Apple Watch... and I'm wondering if it's worth installing to test.

I cannot do it right now because she's away for a few days.

I completely agree with you. I think Apple Support is great. I'm not blaming them. I'm blaming product development. The iPhone 6s and the AirPods are both Apple products. They should have tested with their own products, including Apple Watch, before it was released. There is really no excuse for this. It is clear that there is an issue with iPhone 6s and Apple Watch. What is amazing is that they haven't officially addressed this.

I'm wondering if disabling Handoff in iPhone Settings might have an effect.

Ultimately, if I had to choose between my Watch and the AirPods, I'd have to keep the Watch. I use that every day and find it an indispensable part of my routine. I can always go back to wired headphones (Bose QC 20i's are amazing), although the wire and battery module will be that much more of an annoyance now that I've gotten a taste of truly wireless earphones... sort of like going back to driving a gas car after driving electric.

I would like to add to this discussion that while I do not have an Apple Watch, I do have a Fitbit Blaze. I am experiencing the same issues with the AirPods disconnecting briefly during calls. After unpairing my Fitbit I do not experience the issue.

I've been working with apple advanced support for the week trying to troubleshoot and get to the bottom of the issue. Loading profiles and sending them log files. 2.5GB of log files.

One of the elements of the testing is to capture a log snapshot when it happens.. on my phone 6s (yes 6s) this is done by pressing the sleep/wake button and the two volume rockers simultaneously (there is a haptic feedback when doing this) and this writes a time stamp or log flag to the ever growing log file that I send over.

that said, what I HAVE found out while doing this process is that by DOING this funky action, it RECONNECTS the airpods nearly EVERY TIME.

so give that a shot next time and see if it works. This shouldn't be required, but till we get to v1.0.1 at least for FW, some of us may just have to live with the issue.

I'm hoping that is isn't something to do with the BT radio on the 6s, or with the actual pair of airpods that I have (having given away five pair as xmas gifts it would be pretty ironic if MY pair were the bad pair)

apple will resolve it soon enough though i believe. The folks I have been working with are very professional.

using with iphone 6s, 10.2.1 (beta) aw2 3.1.3 (beta)

Agreed - everyone I've talked to at Apple has been very professional and enjoyable to work with.

After using my restored-from-backup 6S all day today, but not having yet paired my Watch, I had several calls go just fine... until this evening, when during a FaceTime Audio call both AirPods disconnected and audio shifted to the handset. It was an important call, so I didn't mess around any further and just talked on the handset.

So not pairing the Apple Watch may have reduced the problem, in a similar way as using just one AirPod on calls... but it didn't completely eliminate it... which has been my experience so far with the various work-arounds. Symptoms reduced, but still occasionally happen.

Contemplating upgrading to an iPhone 7+, but sounds like some people have experienced the symptoms even with it. Could it be that the 6S and Watch combination is simply most common for the AirPods early-adopter demographic...