I absolutely love my AirPods, so much so that when my original AirPods battery started dying early during meetings I bought a new set of AirPod Pro without even thinking.
That said, I experience all of these issues too. Another one to add to the list that I really don't understand. If I'm listening to a podcast on my phone and remove an airpod for a moment (to speak to someone or whatever) the podcast pauses as expected. But then putting it back in my ear there seems to be only about a 25% chance the podcast starts playing again. Most of the time I have to open the Spotify app back up and manually resume.
I've noticed when it doesn't resume, often the music player also isn't on the lock screen. I'm wondering if it's getting kicked out of memory if it happens to be in a non-active paused state when the device decides it needs to free some memory up?
If I had to place a bet - my money would be on your theory. I've noticed the exact same thing, which makes it even worse as I then have to pull up the app drawer and go back to my player app. At least it never gets totally kicked out in that the state is preserved/not reloading like a fresh open.
I guess my question from there would be why does the device suddenly feel the need to release resources when the music/podcast pauses? I'm experiencing it on an iPhone 13 Pro which should have no shortage.
If it was a once in a blue moon thing I would brush it off as just unlucky timing, but it happens very regularly.
That said, I experience all of these issues too. Another one to add to the list that I really don't understand. If I'm listening to a podcast on my phone and remove an airpod for a moment (to speak to someone or whatever) the podcast pauses as expected. But then putting it back in my ear there seems to be only about a 25% chance the podcast starts playing again. Most of the time I have to open the Spotify app back up and manually resume.