I don’t know if it was _this_ problem, but I had an issue after firmware update this week. I have had the QC35 II headphones since 2017, and I love them. I also

I don’t know if it was _this_ problem, but I had an issue after firmware update this week. I have had the QC35 II headphones since 2017, and I love them. I also never update software unless something is broken—I don’t care about new features, I just want things to keep working. This past week I had to launch the Bose app to reconnect my phone to the QC35’s and it suggested a firmware update. I very rarely launch the app, so I let it proceed. They became _completely_ unusable after the update. The audio quality was awful, and noise cancelling virtually disappeared. I was able to determine that the problem was the QC35 microphone was stuck “on”, so it was attenuating the audio and amplifying ambient noise. I’ve had similar problems before with other Bluetooth devices and suspected that the firmware change caused them to identify or connect to the wrong Bluetooth device profile. Fortunately, restarting my phone resolved the problem. I don’t know why that worked, and I don’t know whether it was the phones fault or the headphones fault. It just affirmed my reasons for avoiding software updates.