iPhone Fiasco

Ever since the launch of iOS 11, I've been having serious trouble with my iPhone 6S.  There were a lot of little troubles, but the most infuriating one was that all of my Bluetooth connections would randomly be dropped.  That was particularly when using my Bluetooth headphones while working out, or using the capabilities to play music or talk on the phone in my car.

Sometimes I could go hours without a drop.  Other times it would be every three minutes.  The whole time I'd be sitting there wondering when the next time the connection would be lost.  It plain sucked.

Diagnosing online offered a bevvy of potential solutions, and I tried them all, from the mundane to the downright painful.  Nothing.

Having suffered from this since the upgrade last September, having tried every fix under the sun, and having been disappointed by the failures of myriad upgrades since to improve my situation, I took my phone into the Apple Store and was loaded for bear.  Somebody was going to feel my wrath.

The kid that came up to help me could not have been more nice.  I don't mean that as a cliche.  He was ridiculously nice.  He worked with me to try and diagnose my issue, and when one wasn't in the offing, he broke the bad news to me gently: I needed to do a full wipe of my phone.  My OS system was likely corrupted, and the only way to fix it would be to restore the phone to factory defaults and set it up as a new phone; ignoring my backups which likely contained tainted code.

It'd be long and it'd suck.  Everything would be gone, from apps to photos to contacts.  Everything would need to be restored, and we'd start from scratch.  He was sorry, but that's what we needed to do.

I couldn't say anything.  All I could do is take my sick phone home and relegate myself to my fate.

I did it.  And guess what?  It failed.  I was back to Bluetooth drops; this time worse than before.  Now I was really ticked.  I was able to navigate my way through to actually call someone at Apple - a rare feat in and of itself - and I was fit to be tied.  She was working off a script and asking me if I had tried different treatments, which I had, multiple times.  She then asked, "Have you reached out to the manufacturers of the devices to which you're trying to pair to see if they can make upgrades to accommodate iOS11?"  

That was it.  The last straw.

"WHAT?  You want ME to call FORD and have them fix my car because YOU upgraded YOUR software and it doesn't work with my car anymore?"  She hated my response and immediately handed me off to a supervisor.

The guy that hopped on the phone was a tool.  My only options would be to send it in for repair or buy a new phone.

Hello iPhone 8 plus.  So far, things are working OK, but I'm on pins and needles.  If this doesn't work, I'm going back to a laptop and a landline.