AirPods abruptly go silent while listening to music from iPhone UPDATE 2018-09-24: Running iOS 12 for a week now. I haven't experienced this problem so far. While it seems the issue might be gone, I haven't had much use of the AirPods this last week.

There are many discussions about problems with AirPods disconnecting all over the net, but I'm not sure I've seen my case anywhere.

Basically I listen to music from iPhone with my Airpods. It could be Apple Music or SoundCloud or whatever.

Sometimes the sound just stops - but when I look at my iPhone I notice that the airpods appear to be connected, and the iPod music player or whatever player I was currently using, is still ticking on ie the time progresses; play is not paused.
Each time when this happens I have to do one of these methods:

Temporary fix method 1


pause the music (obviously this is optional, but if I don't I miss some parts)
disconnect the airpods
connect the airpods
(play the music)


Temporary fix method 2

I've found another way which fixes the problem after it happened:


Pause for at least ~10 seconds
Unpause


Notes


Using iPhone 6s Plus, currently iOS 11.4.1
It is very inconvenient. There is no problem with batteries, this could happen on a full charge.
after a discussion in the answer below I decided to see what happens if I wait a longer time after the sound goes silent. Turns out the connection is still very much alive because I realized I can still use double taps on the left/right AirPods in order to pause/skip to next song according to my setup. Even pausing/unpairing/skipping this way will not make the sound come back. The iPhone seems to believe that it's sending music to perfectly sounding AirPods.
It kind of often happens after I look at the phone doing something, then put it down on a desk (likely locks it, or it autolocks after some minute) and after the screen goes black and then some more seconds (not sure how long, but it's very short) the music stops.
I get the feeling this happens a lot more when I'm at the office or other places with busy WiFi signals etc all around, but I'm not sure, it could happen almost anytime, it's hard to say.
It's not exactly reproducible - I can't cause it to happen, but it normally happens like one or a few times a day.
I don't use the phone much at all so I have no idea if this issue affects phone calls. Just no info here. I just had a call today and was using the AirPods and after 7-8 minutes the other guy started to sound like a monster (people describe this as "underwater" and I can also agree with that). I quickly switched off the AirPods and talked using the iPhone itself.
It seems to happen regardless of if I am connected to a Wi-Fi network, or have Wi-Fi turned off and am only listening to music with cellular connection.


Anyone have this issue? When googling most pages suggest to unpair the airpods from the iPhone and re-pair them again. I've tried that, I believe, but I don't think it made anything better.

Kind of similar issues


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8344649 very similar
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7887055
This is typical of an interference between Bluetooth and other electromagnetic waves (Wi-Fi in an office or appartment environment, remote commands in every environment, wireless phones in every environment, microwave oven leaking in an office or appartment environment…).

One of the only thing you could do if at all possible is to suggest all Wi-Fi administrators around you (at least the ones who might understand) to switch on 5GHz band channels (36, 40, 44…) so as to reduce these interferences. Their networks will work better too.

This problem will increase regularly with the increase of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi use everywhere. This problem will stay hard to identify and to aknowledge since the channels used by Bluetooth are changing regularly (purposefully to avoid this interference problem ).

You can limit this problem by stopping Wi-Fi within your own environnment. And moreover, to make everyone laugh, you might surround you with a light metal wire mesh the kind used to make garden fences  (avoid the aluminium screen because it's an urban legend).

Another note on the funny side, these network drop is a free nice detector that you are in an overcrowded electromagnetic waves environment.