I think the new AirPods Pro firmware update bricked my AirPods

[davemc0]

I got my AirPods Pro new four months ago. They worked great until last night. I used them yesterday morning. When I finished the case and the pods were each about half charged. I left them by my bed all day, not plugged in to charge, but with the pods in the case and the case closed normally.

I went to use them last night and they acted completely dead. The LED won't light in any circumstances. I open the case and my phone doesn't pop up the battery indicator. I put them in my ears and they make no sound. I hold down the pairing button on the back and they won't pair with other bluetooth devices or respond to other bluetooth devices they are already paired with. They won't respond to my iPad that they were paired with either. Completely dead.

I spent most of the day yesterday with my phone about ten feet from the AirPods Pro. I got and installed the iOS 15.0.1 update on my iPhone 12 Pro at some point during the day yesterday. It seems to work fine. I see that a new AirPods Pro firmware update, 4A400, was just released. I believe that the firmware update, or possibly the iOS update, somehow bricked my AirPods. I can't think of any other possible thing that would make them suddenly stop working without anything physical happening to them.

Last night I plugged them in to charge. I confirmed that the charging wire was working by plugging it into my phone first. After a few minutes the AirPods felt a bit warm to the touch in the bottom middle. I assume this was the battery charging. This morning they still felt warm to the touch. I think this is a bad sign. It doesn't take eight hours to charge the batteries. They are still totally unresponsive.

I tried the reset procedure (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209463), but no luck. I noted that my iPhone and iPad still report the firmware version as 3E751, not the new 4A400, before I did Forget This Device. I'm guessing the firmware update did not complete successfully, so it didn't display the new firmware version.

Is there anything I can try on my own before calling Apple to get these replaced?

 

[big samm]

Just get them replaced you got them 4 months ago so you’re good to go for a warranty claim.

 

[davemc0]

Just get them replaced you got them 4 months ago so you’re good to go for a warranty claim.

Thanks. That's what I ended up doing. To finish the story, I made an appointment with the Genius Bar. In making the appointment on the phone the advisor said that there didn't seem to be a massive wave of failures with the new firmware upgrade, but that there were a few indications from other people of a potential problem.

At the Genius Bar they tried pairing my case with known-working AirPods, and pairing my AirPods with a known-working case. They determined that the AirPods worked but the case was bad. They gave me replacement AirPods and case. Whew.

Later that day I got a call from an Apple advisor who asked me a bunch of additional questions about the circumstances of the failure, etc. He was trying to troubleshoot the issue and determine whether it was related to the new firmware. I think this was a really smart move. I'm glad they take these kinds of potential problems seriously.

And by the way, when I got my new AirPods Pro the first attempt to upgrade the firmware by listening to music for thirty seconds, then putting the AirPods in their case and plugging it into a wired charger for 30 minutes did not do the upgrade. But I tried again after an hour or two and it did upgrade to 4A400. Cool!