iPhone 7 EarPods activate Siri on short press, instead of playing audio

Issue: I press play on the EarPods remote to turn on audio, but Siri is activated instead.

• I am doing the short press of the button, not the long press for Siri
• only happens when trying to play audio, not pause it
• happens with several pairs of EarPods, both lightning version and 3.5mm+lightning adapter, even new pair that could not have been damaged or exposed to water
• new issue with iPhone 7, never happened on 3G/4/4S/5/5S/6
• issue persists from Sept 2016 on iOS 11.0 to present day (11.2.6), even through clean restore
• doesn't happen every time. Typically only when audio hasn't played for a while. Maybe 1 in every 10 times that audio has been paused for 10 minutes.

Can't replicate it at Apple store because it is so unpredictable. I replicated it once, but this was my first visit so they just replaced my EarPods. Next time it happened, I went back as instructed, but the next guy talked down to me for not being able to replicate it and made a note on my file that it's not a hardware issue

I can't tell whether this is an issue of:

• iOS 11 in general
• iPhone 7 in general
• Audio via lightning port in general
• My particular situation (whether my iPhone 7, my lightning port (dust? broken/bent pin?), or my iOS 11 setup)

The only things I can rule out are:

• User error, as the user is the same and the problem is new (and it's easy to tell what is a short press vs a long press)
• EarPods or lightning adapter, as these have changed multiple times yet the issue persists

Has anyone had this issue? I can't find it documented online. It's annoying as it takes several presses of the button to get out of Siri and get the audio playing, but obviously not some huge deal. I do listen to my headphones a lot, so it's multiple times per day.