Strange error with Earfun Air earbuds

I have two pairs of EarFun Air earbuds, each set paired to different devices.

The pair I use with my Android phone were working fine for playing music, but nobody could hear me on phone, WhatsApp, or Teams calls.

I tried the suggested fixes e.g. reset them and Bluetooth re-pair them, and to clean them. All to no effect.

I then tried to check their more vendor specific settings using the EarFun Audio app.

This app behaved very strangely. The phone was happily connected to the earbuds over bluetooth, but the app kept trying to connect, failing and retrying. No matter what I did I could not change this behaviour.

To work out where the problem lay, I paired my other pair of EarFun Air earbuds to my phone. The app could connect and control these without issues.

The I remember, I had accidentally put my ‘problem’ pair of earbuds through the washing machine. Leaving them in their case in a pocket.

Though they appeared to have survived the wash cycle, it seems it damaged the microphone, which does not seem unreasonable. Stranger is that the BlueTooth connectivity failed such that the app cannot connect, but the basic BlueTooth connection works.

So top tip, don’t put your earbuds through a 30 Deg C wash cycle and expect them to be fully functional

For the original version of this post see Richard Fennell's personal blog at Strange error with Earfun Air earbuds