Albiet that my iPhone 8 does not work well with this car, today it was a bit more than just the cutouts. First, I was using Apple CarPlay with Waze and a podcast going, and the sound cut out. I tried to back the Podcast up so I could hear what was said, and it cut out for longer, then, the iPhone disconnected from CarPlay. It came back a long while later. Then, I was on a call when I had to start driving. The iPhone would not connect to Apple CarPlay at all. Not at all! Only once I got off the call did CarPlay connect. Anyone else seeing this, or is it just about my iPhone 8?
By any chance did you upgrade to the latest ios recently? I did and my earbuds haven’t worked since. I’m guessing there’s a new bug that affects connections with some bluetooth devices.
I have not tried being on a call and starting the Mini yet. But I have had a few instances now where my iPhone 12 does not want to wake up and connect to CarPlay. Luckily, it is rare so far. And usually fixed by turning the car off and back on. I have not researched forcing it to connect via bluetooth in my phone settings. Not sure if that would work.
I stopped using the native Apple Podcasts app because I had a similar issue with my Toyota and my iPhone 8. I now use something called RSSRadio. It's different than Podcasts somehow in that the "sound path" appears to follow more of the convention of regular "app audio" than "music audio" if that makes sense. I've noticed that it means that it tends to play well with other apps that also output audio, like Waze voice directions. But mainly I use it because it's one of the few podcast apps that actually let you put a URL manually for the podcast and follows it from your iPhone device instead of a centralized server. This allows me to host a local RSS server at my house which downloads all of my podcasts and then my iPhone can rapidly load them all from my server acting like a high speed cache. But I digress... I also have an iPhone 11 and I have not noticed any performance difference between that and the iPhone 8 with respect to CarPlay. The one thing I have noticed is if you don't use Carplay, but treat the iPhone 8 like an iPod music player, the iPhone 8 sometimes gets confused and refuses to send the directory of audio files over for the computer to browse. This happens on both my Toyota as well as the MINI. That's often the way I am handing my music when my wife and I drive together; my phone does Carplay for directions, and she plays DJ with her iPhone doing the music acting like an iPod, so I don't have to think about what music/podcast we're listening to.
I just want it to … um… work. It does seem my iPhone gets completely overwhelmed when in CarPlay mode. I’m hoping my impending upgrade to a 12 resolved some of this. The lame bit is that I had a Pioneer head unit it my last car, and it didn’t require Bluetooth and worked just fine. It didn’t connect as fast, but it did always connect.
I've had no issues with my iPhone 12 Pro. There are a couple of things different with the iPhone 8: slower processor, Wi-Fi version (no Wi-Fi 6), not-as-good Bluetooth antenna. They run the same version if iOS, so it can't be the software. And I don't know what Wi-Fi the SE has built-in, but CarPlay does actually use both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
iPhone 12 (not Pro) here. Yesterday CarPlay would not connect at all. Usually if I'm patient it wakes up after a few minutes. Drove again today and it would not connect. I went through the iDrive menus to my phone settings and deselected and selected CarPlay under my phone settings. No happiness. On my phone, under wifi, it was showing as connected to the Mini's wifi for CarPlay. I finally: 1) Deleted my phone from iDrive menu 2) Bluetooth on iPhone - forgot the Mini 3) Wifi on iPhone - forgot the Mini 4) Added a new device from scratch It started working again.
I've had no issues with my Samsung Note20. Even to the point where it was so seamless I paused talking out of being in shock in a good way.
How's the Android experience in general? (Notes are awesome! Upgrading my Note 9 to a Note 20 Ultra tomorrow) It's disappointing there's no Android Auto but Bluetooth will still be a big upgrade over my current cassette adapter lol
No complaints at all. I'm actually not in love with AA as it is (spouse's car has it and it drives me nuts as well as sucks battery) and I bluetooth my streaming music (amazon, though my kid can his Spotify) with zero issues. I've been effectively on this set up since June of 2106 though. I do like the ability to send directions to my car - that's new as is all the remote lock/unlock, climate etc. In general I am very happy with the integration of it all. Enjoy the Note 20 Ultra! I almost got that one but wanted the flat screen.
