Airpods - new owners views, problems and questions

[whsbuss]

I love the AirPods but the bluetooth connection is so bad sometimes, half the song is cut out by stutters or just no sound at all due to drop in connection. Happens at home, on the subway, at the office. I can't isolate the issue. I've tried putting my apple watch in airplane mode, turning wifi off and nothing helps. I have the ATT 7+, so maybe it's the intel modem?

Must be something with my devices if some people are experiencing perfect connection.

SO far, the only break up issues I've had is when I run the microwave and I am within 5 feet of it.

 

[JNGold]

Has anyone else noticed how crazy good the Bluetooth is on the Airpods? I work in an old cinderblock building. I can't even get from my classroom to the hall and keep my Watch connected if I leave my phone on my desk. The Airpods, OTOH, allow me to walk down the hall and around the corner without losing the connection. IMPRESSIVE!!!

Here's an excerpt from the Connectivity section of my AirPod Report Card posted on my blog:

Connectivity Reliability

This category primary is concerned with how strong the bluetooth signal is between the phone and both AirPods. It is important to note that when connected to the iPhone, dual BT signals are sent to each individual AirPod unlike some of the other wireless solutions on the market that send a BT stream from the device to one earbud and then that earbud sends that signal along via wire or BT to the second earbud. Apple has nailed this in every sense of the word. Whatever magic Apple put into that glorious W1 chip, it has improved the all around connection experience. Indoors the signal is rock solid even when my iPhone is in the kitchen and I am upstairs in my office with the AirPods on. That's impressive, Even more so is the connection reliability when outdoors. I can walk down a busy Manhattan street and have other bluetooth headsets crackle and experience signal skip. Not the AirPods. I can have the iPhone 7 in a coat pocket, or even in my back pocket and still maintain a solid connection on those very same treacherous Manhattan streets. This is one of the BIG wins for the W1 chip.

Connectivity Reliability: A

 

[Teride]

The confirmation tone only sounds once for me. I believe it's by design.

Sometimes only the second inserted pod makes the alert, but it mostly the first pod. If I only use one and later add the second, it joins the connection without a sound.

If both are inserted before I manually connect to a device, they both play the tone.

I like the AirPods' alert sound much better than my previous headsets that said "connected" very loudly. It's always reassuring to get confirmation where the source audio is going to play. I don't like people on the train to hear my choice of morning music.

The confirmation tone means you're connected. Remember you can play with just one AirPod so you don't get the tone when you place the 2nd one in your ear.

I had no "Tone" a few times. Sometimes I can just start playing music on the watch & they connect & other times I cannot get them to connect. Not sure why this happens.

 

[JNGold]

So far, the biggest PIA for me is with activating Siri via the AirPods. While listening to any audio, I am (for the most part) able to activate Siri with a double tap but either the Siri line shows itself on the iPhone screen or I hear no Siri "bong" signaling she ready for a command. There have been several times there is no bong or voice wave line. It's frustrating when you have to try more than a few times to get Siri to respond just to issue a command and have it work.

 

[Teride]

So far, the biggest PIA for me is with activating Siri via the AirPods. While listening to any audio, I am (for the most part) able to activate Siri with a double tap but either the Siri line shows itself on the iPhone screen or I hear no Siri "bong" signaling she ready for a command. There have been several times there is no bong or voice wave line. It's frustrating when you have to try more than a few times to get Siri to respond just to issue a command and have it work.

Same here...this happens to me all the time. I was actually contacted by Apple a little over a week ago about specific issues I had & they had me download "logging" files to my iPhone/watch. I did experience this issue & recorded it on my watch per Apples instruction. Yesterday Apple walked me through how to capture & send them the log files I had. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future.

 

[tivoboy]

For those who've worked with apple to create the logs, can you tell me how to get RID of them all after logging and the profiles are removed? I'm not sitting with about 20GB of logs still on the device, apparently.

 

[Ad13]

I love the AirPods but the bluetooth connection is so bad sometimes, half the song is cut out by stutters or just no sound at all due to drop in connection. Happens at home, on the subway, at the office. I can't isolate the issue. I've tried putting my apple watch in airplane mode, turning wifi off and nothing helps. I have the ATT 7+, so maybe it's the intel modem?

Must be something with my devices if some people are experiencing perfect connection.

I reported this earlier in the thread.
I think I've pinned it down to something to do with mobile connectivity. When I download the music and play that from my iPhone 6s Plus, I get few stutters and drops. However, when I stream music over mobile from Apple Music, I get drops all over the place. Also engaging Siri also triggers drops for me too. I've swapped my AirPods and I'm in my third set - all displaying the same issues. I think this is why these things were delayed. As much as I love them, I just don't feel like they're ready for prime time. This must have been picked up during early development testing. I'm sure things will be fixed during an software update, but this is just disappointing.

Christian.Terra, is his a similar problem to you? Are you streaming or are you playing downloaded music?

 

[Another Day]

I reported this earlier in the thread.
I think I've pinned it down to something to do with mobile connectivity. When I download the music and play that from my iPhone 6s Plus, I get few stutters and drops. However, when I stream music over mobile from Apple Music, I get drops all over the place. Also engaging Siri also triggers drops for me too. I've swapped my AirPods and I'm in my third set - all displaying the same issues. I think this is why these things were delayed. As much as I love them, I just don't feel like they're ready for prime time. This must have been picked up during early development testing. I'm sure things will be fixed during an software update, but this is just disappointing.

Christian.Terra, is his a similar problem to you? Are you streaming or are you playing downloaded music?

I'm having the same problem with my pair too. They work fine with my rMB, but when I try to stream with spotify/apple music from my 7+ it will start cutting in and out every couple minutes. It seems to happen more often with spotify. Also having the same problem playing music that is stored locally and during calls!

Not experiencing any problems with my beats solo2 connected to my 7+.

 

[Ad13]

I'm having the same problem with my pair too. They work fine with my rMB, but when I try to stream with spotify/apple music from my 7+ it will start cutting in and out every couple minutes. It seems to happen more often with spotify. Also having the same problem playing music that is stored locally and during calls!

Not experiencing any problems with my beats solo2 connected to my 7+.

What I've also noticed is, when at home and on wifi, I don't have the problems but outside without wifi, this is when the drops and stutters happen with streamed music. Maybe the rMB is working perfectly as it's on wifi and not having to handle mobile data?

 

[Another Day]

What I've also noticed is, when at home and on wifi, I don't have the problems but outside without wifi, this is when the drops and stutters happen with streamed music. Maybe the rMB is working perfectly as it's on wifi and not having to handle mobile data?

I'm having the problem with LTE and WIFI at home/my office. I did a hard reset, reset the network settings, and tried using airplane mode but stutters still persists.

I don't think it's a problem with my 7+ because it works fine with my wireless solo2, maybe it's a problem with the W1 chip?

 

[Ad13]

I'm having the problem with LTE and WIFI at home/my office. I did a hard reset, reset the network settings, and tried using airplane mode but stutters still persists.

I don't think it's a problem with my 7+ because it works fine with my wireless solo2, maybe it's a problem with the W1 chip?

Interesting! Thanks for reply.

I also tried the same steps, but none rectified the problems.
I have a cheap pair of Bluetooth earphones bought from Amazon for £20. They work flawlessly without problems - they actually put the AirPods to shame.

 

[James.K.Polk]

Just sold my AirPods on Craigslist. They were nice, and I really, really like the charging case. Had some weird BT issues, especially when switching devices, but nothing turning on/off BT couldn't fix.

For me, the reason I sold them was simple - I never listen to anything! It's too distracting while working, I run without music, and on the train I've been reading on my Kindle so I don't need audio. I guess I thought the AirPods would change my daily habits... but apparently not!

Really, really cool gadgets, though.

 

[tivoboy]

What I've also noticed is, when at home and on wifi, I don't have the problems but outside without wifi, this is when the drops and stutters happen with streamed music. Maybe the rMB is working perfectly as it's on wifi and not having to handle mobile data?

I have the problems at home on wifi and out on cellular. :-(

 

[hubieonekanubie]

I've had mine, since Christmas Eve and in the last week or two, they have been dropping calls and phone call goes back to phone earpiece. I don't lose the call, EarPods just drop connection sometimes it come back otherwise it doesn't and says not connected in Bluetooth settings. Have forgot and restored connection to IPhone 6s Plus about 3 times, also have a AW series 2.

I was traveling today to my corporate office and using my iPhone exclusively as my office phone. A similar issue happened 3 or 4 times today. It showed as connected to my AirPod as I was only using one, but it was not connected, nor could I switch it to the phone or speaker. Felt like a fool at times. My Motorola hint works flawless. Not sure if it's the phone or AirPods.

 

[ATC]

My Airpods worked flawlessly the for the first 2-3 weeks but all of a sudden this week I've had numerous instances of two specific issues; 1. random short (1 sec) disconnects during music playback affecting both Airpods simultaneously and 2. random medium duration (up to 10-15 seconds) disconnects affecting just one of the Airpods (where music continues to play through one Airpod only).

With both issues, I was listening to my own music library in the house (full wifi and LTE reception) and my iPhone 7 was in the same room and not being used. No idea what is triggering these and haven't tried anything to reslove.

If they continue I will contact Apple support but I suspect these are not hardware issues but rather software so it's probably pointless to get my pods replaced.

 

[darthbane2k]

I'm having the problem with LTE and WIFI at home/my office. I did a hard reset, reset the network settings, and tried using airplane mode but stutters still persists.

I don't think it's a problem with my 7+ because it works fine with my wireless solo2, maybe it's a problem with the W1 chip?

Not at all. I had the beats solo 3 and the connection was flawless. This problem is with the airpods

 

[Coffee50]

where were they?

Under my passenger car seat! They must have slid under there. Just relived I found them

 

[christian.terra]

I reported this earlier in the thread.
I think I've pinned it down to something to do with mobile connectivity. When I download the music and play that from my iPhone 6s Plus, I get few stutters and drops. However, when I stream music over mobile from Apple Music, I get drops all over the place. Also engaging Siri also triggers drops for me too. I've swapped my AirPods and I'm in my third set - all displaying the same issues. I think this is why these things were delayed. As much as I love them, I just don't feel like they're ready for prime time. This must have been picked up during early development testing. I'm sure things will be fixed during an software update, but this is just disappointing.

Christian.Terra, is his a similar problem to you? Are you streaming or are you playing downloaded music?

I really hope it's a software update that is needed. I usually listen to my downloaded(offline) playlists on Spotify. I'll have to test the difference in drops between that and Apple Music.

I'm having the same problem with my pair too. They work fine with my rMB, but when I try to stream with spotify/apple music from my 7+ it will start cutting in and out every couple minutes. It seems to happen more often with spotify. Also having the same problem playing music that is stored locally and during calls!

Not experiencing any problems with my beats solo2 connected to my 7+.

I never experienced drops with my shure's. It must be the W-1 chip and the earbuds communicating with each other. I'm going to test out the spotify/apple music difference.

 

[Steelers7510]

Really couldn't be happier and especially when I realized I could pair them with my Apple TV. I thought the case battery life would be better, but that's really not an issue.

 

[Another Day]

I really hope it's a software update that is needed. I usually listen to my downloaded(offline) playlists on Spotify. I'll have to test the difference in drops between that and Apple Music.


I never experienced drops with my shure's. It must be the W-1 chip and the earbuds communicating with each other. I'm going to test out the spotify/apple music difference.

Just got back from the apple store, they have no idea what's causing the stuttering but they are willing to replace it as soon as they get the another shipment.

 

[Ralfi]

Just got back from the apple store, they have no idea what's causing the stuttering but they are willing to replace it as soon as they get the another shipment.

Possibly another App?

Look out for those messages that say ">App< may be slowing down your iPhone".

 

[Another Day]

Possibly another App?

Look out for those messages that say ">App< may be slowing down your iPhone".

Never seen that message before had every iphone since the 2G.

Stutters happen when spotify/apple music is the only app running.

 

[JNGold]

Another day, another call failed to answer by double tapping. This time, I was in the middle of a video feed. Call came in and double tap did something other than allow me to communicate with the person on the other side. The second time the call came in a minute later, I was able to answer. This is starting to get annoying.

 

[Teride]

So annoying...double tap doesn't work for me at all!!

 

[gwynne]

Just a data point, but I've had the AirPods for several weeks including many multi-hour music, podcast, and audiobook sessions, and no dropouts either in my home/office or driving. I have an iPhone 6+ and whatever the current iOS version is.

(I'm still wondering if anyone else has the "unpausable via Siri" problem with iCatcher, but I guess that app isn't nearly as popular as I thought. Might switch back to native podcast app I guess.)