The Apple AirPods Pro 2 was released in September and is largely considered to be one of the best wireless headphones on the market. Unlike most Apple products, AirPods usually work very well with Android phones. However, due to a buggy A2DP offload bug, Apple AirPods Pro 2 doesn’t seem to work well with Google Pixel phones.
A2DP is the ability to use the chip inside the headset to stack data to achieve high-definition sound.
The bug causes the audio to disappear and stop after about 90 seconds of playback. Once the audio stops, the Apple AirPods stay connected, but playback stops. In order to get them working again, users will need to disconnect and reconnect the AirPods, which will then only last for 90 seconds of audio.
There are many reports of this issue on the Google Pixel subsite.
Fortunately, there is a temporary solution. Enable “Disable Bluetooth A2DP hardware offload” in the developer options. This solves the problem but requires the developer mode to remain enabled. This also reduces the audio quality of the headset. A2DP hardware offload transfers the audio decoding from the phone to the headset, which facilitates compression and quality, especially as the Apple H2 chip and processing can be used in the headset.
It is unclear whether this is a problem with Google’s implementation of A2DP hardware offload or with the AirPods Pro 2. Disabling Bluetooth A2DP is the only way to get the Apple AirPods Pro 2 working properly until an official solution is put in place.
