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Bluetooth disconnects from car every 30 seconds iOS 15.3

Octavius8

Octavius8

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 25, 2016
982
1,431
Same car as ever, no car play, only Bluetooth and USB. Same iPhone 13 pro.
After updating to iOS 15.3 my iPhone can’t keep a call over Bluetooth for more than some seconds. My iPhone disconnects from my car and switches to the internal speakers of my phone.
I have to manually try to reconnect BT from my car.
I have forgotten and re-established BT connection between the car and the phone but no difference.
What is going on???
No one has cars with BT instead of CarPlay?
My 3 EarPods (2nd gen, pro and max work fine), only the car scenario is troublesome after iOS 15.3
 
Have you tried fully removing your phone from your car's radio? It would seem that disconnecting/forgetting on the iphone should work but I would try the same thing on the car. I know that some issues with BT was corrected with iOS 15.3(Security patches), maybe that is something that your particular stereo is not liking.
 
At least I’m not the only one. I responded in another thread about this. I’m having the same problem. I’ve unpaired and re-paired several times. I’ve reset network settings. Nothing has helped.
 
Handsfree on my SE1 on 15.2 can connect fine on my no-nav, pre Car Play f30 BMW. My 13 mini does not work at all for Maps, Waze or Google Maps. I’m not sure an iOS update if going to fix this issue. Trouble pairing, disconnects within a minute, never heard a voice prompt through the car speakers. With the SE1 and Maps I get late prompts, it appears Maps is running behind where the car is. Welcome to the new world of seriously compromised products from Apple.
 
I only use wireless CarPlay and it’s massively faster at connecting than ever before. Can you factory reset your radio?
 
I have a care with bluetooth but its hasn't been an issue for me on 15.3 or 15.3.1.

Only suggestion I have is that settings > privacy > bluetooth > permissions for apps are turned on. No other bluetooth devices activating make the phone switch to them? (sorry I'm not insinuating your an idiot but maybe something got overlooked).

Do you guys have an issue with other bluetooth devices? Just your cars?

You can use an app like BLE Scanner to measure the signal strength of your vehicles BT and watch its stability. I would expect a cars BT RSSI to be -40 to -60. Years ago I had an aftermarket BT headunit that BT antenna thing came loose. Hitting bumps would cut the sound out. Easy fix, hard to diagnose.
 
cynics said:
I have a care with bluetooth but its hasn't been an issue for me on 15.3 or 15.3.1.

Only suggestion I have is that settings > privacy > bluetooth > permissions for apps are turned on. No other bluetooth devices activating make the phone switch to them? (sorry I'm not insinuating your an idiot but maybe something got overlooked).

Do you guys have an issue with other bluetooth devices? Just your cars?

You can use an app like BLE Scanner to measure the signal strength of your vehicles BT and watch its stability. I would expect a cars BT RSSI to be -40 to -60. Years ago I had an aftermarket BT headunit that BT antenna thing came loose. Hitting bumps would cut the sound out. Easy fix, hard to diagnose.
Click to expand...
I connected an old iPhone XS on iOS 14, and it stayed connected the whole ride.

The car isn’t connecting to any other Bluetooth devices. The only other device in the car would be my Apple Watch, and that has never been paired to my car. Something had to have have changed in iOS 15 to cause this because this was a sudden change in behavior for no other apparent reason. I don’t know what BT version my car is running, but I don’t know how an incompatibility issue could suddenly arise, since I’m pretty sure all iPhones have been on 5.0 since the 8/X.
 
Böhme417 said:
I connected an old iPhone XS on iOS 14, and it stayed connected the whole ride.

The car isn’t connecting to any other Bluetooth devices. The only other device in the car would be my Apple Watch, and that has never been paired to my car. Something had to have have changed in iOS 15 to cause this because this was a sudden change in behavior for no other apparent reason. I don’t know what BT version my car is running, but I don’t know how an incompatibility issue could suddenly arise, since I’m pretty sure all iPhones have been on 5.0 since the 8/X.
Click to expand...
Yep, my SE1 on 15.1 works fine. My 13 mini on various flavors of 15 has never been able to remain connected. Maps cannot connect at all. Phone can connect anywhere from seconds to perhaps a minute, then it disconnects and can't re-pair without turning off the car and restarting or forgetting the phone and setting it up new. iDrive controls no longer work. Even if the phone is connected, iDrive can't hang up the call. I need to grab the phone and do it there.

There have been no updates to the car, hasn’t seen a mechanic since I bought the phone. Apple Maps, Google Maps and Waze have all lost any ability to have voice go over the car's speakers.

Something has clearly changed and the empty feeling in my gut suggests we have a hardware issue. Apple is bad enough getting buggy software addressed. Hardware seems to be caveat emptor these days. Odd we don’t hear the Europeans screaming. They get caught on a call not using handsfree it’s serious money. Here we have zero enforcement so I just toss the phone in a cup holder and grab it for calls. So much for safe driving.
 
Maybe try looking in Settings, Bluetooth, Click on the i in a Circle next to the name of your car and make sure the device type is correct. Also check any other settings in there in case something is obviously wrong.
 
Not that it helps anything but I like the fact others are having the same issue I am, everything was fine up to 15.3.1! Yes I have removed and added the device on but the car and phone....it does not address the issue. I was concerning backing up the phone and starting "new" then restore from a back-up. But I don't believe that will correct the issue.

FYI: iPhone 12Pro, iOS 15.3.1

Has any one here posted this issue on the Apple support site? If what, what is the link?
 
Has anyone tried doing a backup of the phone, doing a Recovery Mode Restore, setup as a new device (don’t restore from backup). Try and see if the BT issues still happen in the car with a factory clean phone?

Do a Erase All Settings, restore from backup.
 
Same for me:
I have an iPhone 11. After updating from 15.2 to 15.3 (and later to 15.3.1) the bluetooth-connection to my car drops randomly every 30 or 60 seconds and the transmission quality for speech and dial tones in calls is rather bad.
I already restarted the phone and I also deleted and reinitiated the bluetooth connection without curing the problem.
I did not try to reset the whole network settings (or even the whole phone) because this would mean having to reenter all wlans and so on. And if I am not sure this helps I don‘t want to have that much work.
Btw: I am posting from Europe! ;) And in our local Apple-support-community there is a lengthy thread on this topic and some people there claim, that the problem is widely discussed by many users in other car- and apple-specific forums and facebook-groups.
 
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I've been having this issue too, but had a random realization today, it happens around when an alexa geofence should trigger. It happens when I get about a 1/4 mile away from my house in either direction, and it does it about the same place coming home. I just don't usually think about it because it's not night time, I only usually think about the geofence being at night because it's to turn on outside lights.

Fully disabling the alexa app geofence has resolved this issue for me.
 
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I returned my 13 mini as I needed reliable handsfree. Went back to my SE1 running 15.3 on a fresh install. Disconnects. Upgraded to 15.4 and all is pretty good but, at times, I need to place a call to get voice instructions to work with Apple Maps. Waze does not work but it hasn’t been able to provided voice over BT for years now. Also have a 6 running whatever the latest version of iOS 12 was. Works great. Tried my GF's SE3 on 15.4. At times it provides voice nav, at others, even though it’s paired, the internal speaker is all that works. Car is a 2014 BMW Sportwagen.

I've now left my 6 in the car and, with the built in speaker, that’s what I use for nav. Pairing the SE1 via BT seems to support all handsfree functionality for phone calls just fine.

It’s really pretty sad when you look at the mess we've had with iOS since 13. Perhaps the new phones are crap as well. But we've certainly enjoyed a stream of new widgets, improved Safari, wonderful search, a new Music app and higher prices.
 
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