FWIW I called Apple. I was told to return them, which I did. I have a new pair for a couple of hours now, and I have not had the exclamation error with these.
After been on hold on the phone for half an hour waiting for Apple support and explaining myself for about 20 min they finally agreed I did everything I could possibly have done (disconnect, reset, force firmware update (non-existent), charged both pods and casing, reset my iPhone etc), and the 2 day old set AirPods pro should be replaced. Now I have to wait over the weekend for UPS to pickup the defective set, but during the day no one is home coming week, so they will leave a form with which I can go to a UPS office to send the set back to Apple. Then after they receive the defective set they will send me a new set. What they didn't tell me on the phone is that delivery will take another 2-3 weeks! I had to find out later after receiving the confirmation by email. I now wish I ordered at one of the resellers, most of them send out replacement devices directly (sometimes reserving an amount on your creditcard). I expected better service from Apple, especially as a business customerSame here, mostly the left one is flashing the exclamation mark and no sound. Used them for an half hour before trouble started. Did a hard reset following the instructions, worked for 3 min and same problem.
I have the same issue, but only after reopening the case or after listening and put it back in case. My first thinking was, that the silicon isn't in the right shape or form and it pushes the AirPods a little bit back -> connection problems. Because after closing the case, the flickering was stoped. At this point, I only have a visual problem. The AirPods seems to load right and after hours of listening, I had no audio issues or flickering because of not loaded batteries of the APP.
Ha, for me it's been the Right pod.Same problem for me. But always the Left pod. I put on charge a while and it went away.
Even if it's not a hardware issue, I wonder how many thousands of units have been returned/exchanged because of this!Add me to the list. Running fw 2B584 so I’m guessing not a hardware issue.
Did some further diagnosis and it appears that I get the exclamation (!) for the AirPod that was put in the case first. Insert L and then R the the L freaks out. Insert the R and then L and the R freaks out. It was difficult but I did not get the (!) when I managed to insert both at the same time 🤷♂️