If you've been experiencing issues with the iPhone 7 Lightning EarPods remote control, you're not the only one. The good news is that Apple is working on a fix.
User reports recently started piling up regarding a glitch in the Lightning EarPods bundled with the iPhone 7, causing the multifunction remote control to stop functioning all of a sudden.
Apple packed its new Lightning EarPods in all iPhone 7 boxes, but this glitch virtually makes the multifunction remote control unusable. Albeit the issue seems to be intermittent, based on user reports, it still indicates that a glitch slipped through the cracks and is affecting Apple's software.
It seems that in the vast majority of the cases, the volume of the EarPods, along with the call/answer buttons, would all of a sudden become unresponsive if left inactive for a few minutes. The audio would keep playing, and the microphone would not deactivate, but users would no longer be able to adjust the volume, make or take calls, or activate Siri with the remote.
The company acknowledged the issue on Monday and said it's already working on a fix. The patch should become available shortly via a software update, reports Business Insider, citing an Apple representative.
This issue, while it may seem minor to some, adds more fuel to the already-burning fire stemming from Apple's decision to remove the 3.5 mm headphone jack from its latest iPhone 7.
With no headphone jack, the new iPhone 7 instead bundles a pair of EarPods with a Lightning plug, along with a Lightning-to-3.55-mm headphone jack adapter to ease the transition.
Apple explained that removing the headphone jack allowed it to use that space for other things, such as making the iPhone 7 water-resistant, adding a bigger battery, better cameras and a Taptic Engine, but issues like this don't really help its case.
On the bright side, at least the issue occurs only once in a while.
"The glitch doesn't happen every time. It's seemingly intermittent and random," Business Insider further notes. "If you experience the problem, you can just unplug your EarPods and plug them in again to temporarily fix it."
This will not prevent the issue from reoccurring the next time the EarPods are left inactive for a few minutes while plugged in to the Lightning port, but it should do the trick until Apple rolls out the fix with its next software update.
If you've got the latest iPhone 7, tell us about your experience with it in the comments section below.
