Not commenting on the rest of your complaints, but it seems really strange to me that you have experienced any issues with airpods whatsoever, as I’ve never heard of anyone having connectivity/pairing issues with those, and i have quite a lot of friends using those, mostly on androids too.
I’ve been using my original pair for almost two years, then switched to airpods pro a couple of months ago. First year was on an android phone, after that it was on different iphones. At no point have i had any connection issues or had to fiddle with settings or pairing after the initial setup (which was as easy as just tapping the case with my phone).
My experience with AirPods has been that everything is great until it's not. Pairing and checking battery is super slick, just open the case near the phone — until, for no discernable reason it doesn't work.
They work perfectly 95% of the time, but that 5% I'm doing the dance of closing the AirPods case multiple times, hovering the case all over the phone, unlocking/re-locking until it decides to work again. This was the case on my 6s and 11. No feedback or errors, just frustration. My friends also enjoy their AirPods but acknowledge my experience isn't out of the ordinary.
At the gym packed with people using AirPods, my pair will sometimes cut, for just a split second, and is a constant reminder that I'm using bluetooth. I'm not disputing that the overall experience isn't better with AirPods, because it definitely is, but for me it hasn't been as smooth as promised. Especially at the cost of my headphone jack.
Yeah this problem recently popped up for me. I have to reboot my damn phone! I'm always bewildered when Bluetooth fails to work reliably. This isn't specific to Apple -- my car sometimes have the same problem. BT just seems like a technology we should have nailed down by now. Someone more knowledgable might be able to give us some insights into this.
I use both AirPods and Powerbeats Pro with my iPhone, Watch, AppleTV and MacBook Pro. Most of the issues are when I am switching between the devices. Admittedly, this is something ordinary bluetooth headphones would not be able to do at all or be extraordinarily difficult pairing/repairing across devices. So I give latitude to connectivity in these scenarios. But when they fail to switch or when AppleWatch fails to connect, it is a pain to "solve".
I’ve had to replace two pairs of AirPods for connectivity issues. The Apple store didn’t even question when I asked for a replacement pair - just a silent acknowledgment that there can be issues with phone calling and the AirPods can’t be repaired.
I have a pair of Sony Bluetooth headphones and they were paired across several devices without any difficulty. And not just my phone and laptop either. My kids borrow them a lot.
Do you switch devices that you use with your headphones? I have issues with my Bluetooth headphones when I try to switch them from my phone to my tablet... sometimes I have to go find my other device and manually disable Bluetooth to get it to connect to my other device.
I do not switch between multiple devices often (mostly between my iphone and macbook, but no issues there, it was as simple as choosing airpods as the audio output on the device I wanted to use them on), so that's the scenario where I accept there could be something I've missed.
To Apple's defense, I don't think there is a wireless pair of headphones in existence at the moment that could handle that scenario better than them, let alone handle the switching scenario at all. I tried the hyped up Sony wireless earbuds that were released in August and promptly dubbed as airpod killers, and they do not support switching between multiple devices at all. Like, it isn't even a bug, it is straight up a feature that doesn't exist. If you want to switch devices, you have to reset the pairing and restart the whole process every time you want to switch the device. Returned them as soon as airpods pro came out, zero regrets.
I find it kind of bizarre that they wouldn’t use the same firmware/chipset as they do in their over the ear headphones. I have a pair of the Sony something-bass (model mdr-xb something or another) over the ear Bluetooth headphones and they’re paired with at least 5 devices.
The situation isn’t quite as dire as that with the Sony buds: you don’t have to forget and re-pair, you can just enter pairing mode on the buds and hit connect from a device that had previously paired, which is better but by no means good at all.
I’ve been using my original pair for almost two years, then switched to airpods pro a couple of months ago. First year was on an android phone, after that it was on different iphones. At no point have i had any connection issues or had to fiddle with settings or pairing after the initial setup (which was as easy as just tapping the case with my phone).