AirPods losing Bluetooth connection during calls

Is anyone here using Tile (app + physical tiles) -- which communicate via Bluetooth?

On another forum, a person "turned off Tile completely" and that solved his AirPod droppout problems. I'm curious if anyone here has tried Tile as a possible root-cause?

I have the same issue with:

• iPhone 6S Plus (iOS 10.2.1)
• Apple Watch 0gen (watchOS 3.1.3)
• AirPods (fw 3.5.1)

When I make a call the iPhone bluetooth goes off. I have no problems when I listening music.

During a call, I have tried to put airplane mode on the watch but iPhone bluetooth is still going off.

I had this exact problem too with my 6s. I've tried two separate pairs of AirPods and same problem if dropping connection every minute or so while on a call. Do you happen to own an Apple Watch? I was able to briefly resolve the problem after resetting my iPhone but before repairing my Apple Watch.

Sadly, I returned my AirPods yesterday until apple can fix this bug.

I also have a 6S and an Apple Watch. Not sure what the watch connection is. However, I have 5 bars cell service. The AirPods disconnect several minutes into a call. In two separate cases this morning I was sitting, not moving within 18" of my phone. Turning bluetooth off and on reconnects the AirPods. I have listened to music for 90 minutes without this problem. Only happens on calls. In a separate case the left AirPod disconnected for about 10 seconds and the right pod was fine. It reconnected on its own during the call. I think the bluetooth problem "might" be in the iOS 10.x on the 6S or the 6S bluetooth radio itself. Currently running 10.2 (14C92). Bluetooth will randomly disconnect from my car radio as well. This has been happening randomly for many months. Clearly before I got the AirPods. Turning bluetooth off and on reconnected to my car radio as well.

What are my options?

Just wanted to add that I am having these issues as well. AirPods work fine listening to music, watching videos, and playing games, but when I either receive or make a phone call, the connection constantly drops and I have to manually reconnect, usually at least once a minute or so. I have tried restarting the iPhone, forgetting the AirPods and re-adding them, resetting the AirPods, all to no avail. I have already submitted feedback to Apple (why doesn't their feedback form have the most recent iOS and macOS versions?).

I can't say if the Apple Watch is for sure the culprit, I suppose there could be many potential issues that interfere with the bluetooth reception/receiver. I did notice the correlation between repairing my Apple Watch with the degradation in operation, but I wouldn't necessarily claim to know if it's causal yet. That said, it does seem that this problem seems to be happening: 1) To users with older phones (6s or older) and 2) most people seem to also have an Apple watch. Anyone else have further thoughts?

I wonder if having more than one bluetooth connection with an iphone overwhelms the available bluetooth bandwidth which is why the same problem would happen with your bluetooth car radio AND the apple airpods? The apple watch relies on a bluetooth connection, so adding either the car radio or airpods would mean that 2 devices are simultaneously trying to communicate with the iphone's bluetooth radio. Seems like my iPhone 6s is overwhelmed. An iphone 7's bluetooth radio is likely more advanced, which might explain why this problem isn't happening as much with iphone 7 owners....This is all my lay person's theory...but it's starting to make sense to me... potentially bad news though...can it be fixed by software update, or would this mean that there is a hardware limitation and older devices can use both a watch and airpods(for calls) at the same time?

I will add that I completely rebuilt the iPhone forcing a complete re download of iOS 10.2, re installation of my apps, etc. A clean install, I did NOT reinstall from backup. The goal was to determine if iOS was corrupt. I reinstalled WatchOS and relinked. The problem persists with this observation. Listening to content like music or books works just fine for hours on end. Listening on a phone call seemed to work for as long as 30 minutes, however, after more than 10 minutes on other calls where "I was speaking" the call disconnected from the AirPods. In my case, with only the AirPods and Watch in a "connected" state upon voice transmit during, several seconds into that voice transmission, the AirPods would disconnect. Shorter calls, so far, have not had this problem. Receive seems to work, events where receive/transmit have been the workflow it fails after time. Reminds me of buffer overflow errors.

I've been experiencing a very similar issue, though I don't think the Bluetooth is entirely disconnecting--it's just not working properly. For me, I can generally hear those on the other end, but they can't hear me. I did try an experiment today in which I completely turned off my Apple Watch, and I was able to have a short phone call with no issues. So based on that one test, it does indicate that the problem lies with some conflict between the Apple Watch and AirPods. I have an iPhone 7 running 10.2. I'm really hoping this issue gets fixed quick because I got the AirPods to use on phone calls as much as I got them for listening to other audio. These issues with the phone are really disappointing.

I have AirPods, iPhone6s, Apple Watch.

Two items:

1. Re: AirPods disconnecting during calls, another thread on Apple Support noted that the problem mostly disappears when using only ONE AirPod. While not ideal, it's a useful workaround to know until Apple provides a real solution.

2. I also have problems during Music playback... specifically:

1. Frequent tiny dropouts / skips in the sound (once every 2 minutes, on average)

2. Less frequent situations where the AirPods disconnect from the iPhone and put Music on pause.

Has anyone here experience similar problems during Music playback, as I describe in #2 above?

I tried a call earlier today with my Apple Watch powered off, and the call went through with no problems. So I thought the case was solved. But then later, I tried another call (again with the watch off), and this time the problem happened again. I still think there is a likely connection with the Apple Watch, but maybe not the sole root cause. Bummer.

I put my watch in airplane mode, which turns off the bluetooth connection to the watch, and participated in a 60 minute conference call. Prior to test my AirPods would disconnect in the 20-30 minute range.

Unrelated, I also had a situation prior to the airplane mode selection where I was listening to a book and the phone rang. I was unable to answer the phone by tapping on the AIrPod so I answered by touching answer on the phone. I was unable to answer verbally. I tried to touch phone or speaker and the screen was frozen. It finally selected speaker but no joy. I went to phone and back to AirPod. Still no ability to talk or listen but the call timer was ticking away. The software seemed confused and slow. Felt like a windows server with a buffer overflow error... the lights were on but nobody's home.

I subsequently conducted a test with the watch in airplane mode. I was listening to the book again and had someone call me. The AirPods worked as advertised.

In previous episodes when the AIrPod disconnected I simply turned bluetooth off and then back on and they reconnected, even during a call.

I have an iPhone 6S, apple watch 1st Gen and when getting my airpods it kept losing connectivity during calls. I then upgraded to the iPhone 7 Plus, thinking this would solve the problem. When using the airpods I lose connectivity less with the 7 Plus than with the 6S, however, it was still a problem during calls. I then contacted apple support and they said I must try it with my apple watch off for 24 hours. I have had my watch off for 3 hours so far and have had no problems (touch wood) during calls as yet.