Ear Buds and Volume Controls Dont Work After iOS 11 Update + Other Issues

Ever since updating to iOS 11 and its "fixes" that have been released my phone has been running like molasses. But the specific problem here is that if i'm listening to a podcast through the podcast app, about 70% of the time using the controls on the Apple ear buds to change the volume wont work, neither will the volume buttons on the side of the phone. When this happens the only way to get the headphone volume control to work is if I have the phone unlocked and im looking at the podcast app. The volume buttons on the phone will work only if the phone is unlocked. In the case that the volume buttons on the side of the phone dont work even when the phone is unlocked, the only way around it other than a restart is to bring up the control panel and change it manually there.

The other issue that happens pretty much 100% of the time now is that if I try to pause a podcast using the center click on the ear bud controls, it will pause the podcast but then starts to play music. The only way to turn it off is to pause the Apple Music app on the lock screen. If you go into the apps running in the background, the Music app is no where to be found as if its not running at all.

Plus the phone in general is still running very sluggish. There has also been a few occasions where the phone refuses to give sound with phone calls. It'll show i'm calling someone but no dial tone or ring can be heard.

The only fix i've found for any of these issues is to do a hard restart of the phone (holding power and home buttons). This means i've had to restart my phone more in the past few weeks than I have in the nearly 2 years i've owned the phone.

What is going on with this OS? This is extremely frustrating and i'm losing my patience. How did Apple release something so broken? Im seriously considering going back to Android.

I just want to make this clear. The phone and ear buds, including all of its buttons worked perfectly fine before this update.