AirPods interferance

I love my AirPods, I’m lucky enough that they fit well and don’t call out and work very well when bike riding and walking and all that. They could do with a little more sound isolation for those loud train carriages, but 95% just great.

Until recently.

They have started to get lots of audio dropouts in certain places where they never did before, like walking from the train in Southern Cross Station to the street. This was never an issue before but has become one. Maybe they installed some new device which is causing interference… if it was the only thing I wouldn’t have an issue.

Probably 25% of the time one (and sometimes both) AirPods fail to connect. If it’s one and I wait, the second usually gets there by itself, if it’s both sometimes putting them in and out of the case sees them come back to life. Other times I have to power cycle the phone. Sometimes I have even had to delete and re-connect them to get them working again.

When using them I will sometime get random pauses, manually hitting play shows that one of the AirPods has disconnected (or thinks it’s out of an ear). This usually comes back by itself very quickly.

I bought these on 22/09/2017, so they are nearing two years old. The battery isn’t what it used to be, something which is especially noticed if I used them to make calls, but battery life isn’t the issue here.

Which leads to the questions:
Does anyone else have these issues?
Is it possible that as the batteries age they aren’t providing enough voltage to work as they should?
What is the warranty on these things? Assuming it’s only 12 months, has anyone argued ACL on what are pretty expensive headphones?

I find mine get interference in particular locations. What could be causing it I’m not sure but it’s usually in the CBD where there’s lots of people. I have no idea how many Bluetooth connections can coexist in the same place but presumably sometimes something has to give and you’ll get drop outs despite Apples marvellous W Chip or whatever it’s called. Age could of course be an issue, but every man and his dog seems to be using Bluetooth headphones these days (and they would not have been two years ago when you first got them) and I think you’ll find in crowded places you’ll likely have problems (and so will everybody else).

Personally I put foam covers on mine and disabled all the smart features. Foam covers make them sound much better, they never fall out of my ears. Mine are now about 18 months old I think.

Given the nature of these I’d be very surprised if I get three years out of them. I did have one of mine die (very early on) Apple replaced it and the case (though the other airpod which was fine they left me with).

Something of interest to note: I switched to Android for a while and continued to use my Airpods with a Pixel 2XL. They worked flawlessly, and I think they had less dropouts under Android then under Apple!

Re ACL I can’t say, but you can only try. You might get lucky, the worst that will happen is they’ll say no.

I get interference on my AirPods too when i ride up the escalator in South Cross Station up until the BoM building usually. Same for Flinders St crossing over to Elizabeth St!

Sometimes one of my AirPod wouldn’t connect (usually left side), so I would reboot my iPhone to get it working again.