The latest iPhone, the most affordable model in the range, called the iPhone 16e, went on sale on Feb. 28. In the two weeks since then, some users have been experiencing issues. The good news is, help is on the way. Here’s what to do.
Apple iPhone 16e
The problem concerns audio, specifically Bluetooth audio, according to complaints from users, as noted by Joe Rossignol at MacRumors.
“According to complaints from affected users across the Apple Support Community, Reddit, and X, audio being streamed from an iPhone 16e to a Bluetooth speaker periodically stutters or cuts out. It is unclear how widespread the problem is,” Rossignol says.
But wait, you ask, wasn’t there just an iPhone update which specifically addressed streaming issues? Quite right, that’s iOS 18.3.2, and it was released after the iPhone 16e, which therefore didn’t have it on board.
That’s an unrelated issue, however, and one user who has been affected by this said, “Updated to iOS 18.3.2 (22D8082) and still no change,” they commented.
The nature of the issue seems to be that music playback over Bluetooth will stop and start up again quickly, and has happened with different Bluetooth headphones, for example Apple AirPods and Sony cans.
As more people have commented, more aspects have emerged. One Redditor commented, “I found that I had another app (for my Oura smart ring) which was causing the stuttering. It uses another Bluetooth connection other than my headphones. If I closed the Oura app, so it wasn’t running in the background, the stuttering stopped. So it might be related to having multiple Bluetooth connections going at the same time?”
That’s not clear, and although there have been multiple complaints, again, there’s no evidence yet that this is widespread. Some users have turned to switching off Bluetooth on other devices to solve the problem, though obviously that’s a workaround which becomes decreasingly appealing.
I will say that in three weeks of testing the iPhone 16e, I didn’t experience this issue and have been unable to recreate it.
What To Do
Users are saying that swapping the device for another iPhone 16e didn’t solve the problem and nor did a factory reset.
However, there’s good news: one Reddit user said that updating to the next iPhone software, iOS 18.4 which is in beta at the moment, may be the solution. They said, “For anyone still dealing with this issue, it seems to be resolved in the iOS 18.4 public beta for me at least. Since I updated 3 days ago, I haven’t had any problems with the Bluetooth.”
The public beta is available if you want to upgrade to it now, but betas by definition are not perfect so the best advice I can give is: sit tight and wait for iOS 18.4.
The public release of iOS 18.4 will be in April. I’ll report back if Apple comments on this issue or, of course, if an update lands to fix it.
