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Android App not waking up and connecting to Model 3

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M

Monroematt

New Member
Aug 12, 2017
4
1
New Jersey
#1
After parking my Model 3 outside, or in the garage, the Android phone app has difficulty waking up and connecting to the car. Sometimes it will connect after multiple attempts, but often it just keeps trying until it times out. If I go out to the car and open the door, the car wakes up, and the phone app connects very quickly. I have tried restarting the phone, and clearing the app cache, but this has not helped. Obviously going to the car and manually opening the door to wake up the car is not the purpose of using the phone app.

Any ideas on how to correct the issue?
 
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#2
android fan and daily user.

did you just get the car or the phone? are you new to android?
running any vpn on your phone?
do you have any aggressive battery option enabled? usually these types of postgs are from people who have apps to go to deep sleep and/or not run in the background.

what brand phone do you have? do you have another phone you can test this with?
is the car sleep or is sentry on?
 
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#3
I don't know if this is exactly the same issue as the Op's, but my Samsung Android A32 seems to have trouble connecting the Tesla App. to the vehicle. On a regular basis I'll get the following message, "Last seen X hours or X minutes ago" with the X being the number of hours or minutes it was last connected. Then it shows "Parked". Sometimes it'll take a half minute or more to find and connect. When I was having my MSP serviced the other day, it would come up with, "In Service" immediately, every time. Also, today for the first time I've received the following messages, followed by "Parked": "500 Server Error" and "503 Server Maintenance". I suspect this is Tesla's Server, as this is the first time I've ever seen these messages.

My question is as follows: Is it normal for the App. to ALWAYS take so long to find the vehicle or should it be almost instantaneous?

This is really inconvenient when coming out to the vehicle from the market or such (especially in the rain/snow) and have to wait a half minute or so to be able to open the trunk, as everything on the App. is inoperative until it finds the vehicle.
 
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#4
depending on where you are and if the car is sleep, it may take some seconds for the car to wake up. if its in sentry or you just polled the car , waking it from sleep, if you do this again in under a few minutes, it should connect right away.

the app does not stay connected to the car 24/7 if thats what you are asking. in that case the car would never go to sleep.
 
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#5
The car needs good LTE signal in order to receive the wakeup SMS that Tesla servers send it when your app starts. If cellular reception at the car is poor, it will sometimes not work.
Some people have reported trouble waking the car when the car is connected to a wifi but the signal to that wifi is poor. If that is your case (poor wifi signal in the car when it's parked in your garage), you could try disconnecting that wifi and see if wakeups work better afterwards.
 
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#6
When the phone is near the car, don't they connect directly via Bluetooth (without needing a server)?

Tips from other forum threads include:
  • Turning off "battery optimization" on the phone for the Tesla app.
  • Removing punctuation from the phone's bluetooth name (Monroematt's phone) and maybe even from all the contacts. (The contacts seem unlikely to matter but someone should carefully test that hypothesis.)
 
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#7
lUtriaNt said:
depending on where you are and if the car is sleep, it may take some seconds for the car to wake up. if its in sentry or you just polled the car , waking it from sleep, if you do this again in under a few minutes, it should connect right away.

the app does not stay connected to the car 24/7 if thats what you are asking. in that case the car would never go to sleep.
Click to expand...
It doesn't seem to matter where I am.....home, market, mall, etc., it always takes up to a half minute or so to wake up. When I am away from the vehicle, I do have it in Sentry mode though. Also, if I poll the vehicle again within a few minutes, it is quicker to respond and does only take 5-15 seconds or so.

My Android Tesla App. doesn't appear to allow me to not optimize the battery for it.
 
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#8
you do not want the app to be optimized! so that's a good thing!! :)

if you DO have battery saver options turned on, the android kernel will monitor dormant apps and push them out of ram to save battery life. i do not use any battery saver options. if you go to battery>background usage limits> check those settings there to make sure tesla app is not in deep sleep sleeping.

on your tesla icon, long press until you get a pop up. go to app info, and tap battery.set it to "unrestricted".
 
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#10
ok im using nova launcher -- my bag.. :)

go to settings>apps. find the tesla app and tap it. once inside, scroll down to "battery" and tap on it. make sure "unrestricted" is selected.

also make sure you dont have an aggressive battery options set. if you do, disable that for a bit and test to make sure that is not interfering. i have 2 android phones and they both work properly with the vehicle.
 
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#11
My phone is a Samsung A32 and, when in the Tesla App. the only items available are: Allow Background Activity (set to on); Optimize Battery Usage (under it is says, "Optimizing battery usage")....and there are no options to change it; Active Use with the most recent time app was used (minutes ago); Background Use shows Active for "0" minutes.
 
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#12
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#14
Apparently my phone's Optimization is on all of the time and cannot be turned off. I was able to verify the Tesla App is not in deep sleep though. I am thinking, like some have said, it's the signal, or lack of, that is causing at least some of this issue. I know, at my house, I have some "dead spots" where I either don't get any signal or a very weak signal. I think this may also be true at some of the places we frequent. Today, we were at a place where everything worked extremely fast, including finding the Tesla. Now, how to improve the signal at home???
 
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#15
KnightRiderKit said:
Apparently my phone's Optimization is on all of the time and cannot be turned off. I was able to verify the Tesla App is not in deep sleep though. I am thinking, like some have said, it's the signal, or lack of, that is causing at least some of this issue. I know, at my house, I have some "dead spots" where I either don't get any signal or a very weak signal. I think this may also be true at some of the places we frequent. Today, we were at a place where everything worked extremely fast, including finding the Tesla. Now, how to improve the signal at home???
Click to expand...

There's more than one signal, so that complicates debugging.

Walking up to the car, what matters for unlocking is the BLE Bluetooth signal between the phone and the car. If the phone is a pocket or purse, some people have found that it's more reliable when the phone is in a front pocket or the purse is near the BLE antennas. I've been told those are in the side B pillars, in or near the rear bumper, and in the center console next to the NFC card reader.

Also, this is the situation where Android battery optimization matters. Turning on the phone and opening the Tesla app will overcome that -- Android won't interfere with the app you're running.

For distant control, the phone and the car need internet connections to Tesla's servers via cellular or WiFi signals.
 
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#17
Transformer said:
There's more than one signal, so that complicates debugging.

Walking up to the car, what matters for unlocking is the BLE Bluetooth signal between the phone and the car. If the phone is a pocket or purse, some people have found that it's more reliable when the phone is in a front pocket or the purse is near the BLE antennas. I've been told those are in the side B pillars, in or near the rear bumper, and in the center console next to the NFC card reader.

Also, this is the situation where Android battery optimization matters. Turning on the phone and opening the Tesla app will overcome that -- Android won't interfere with the app you're running.

For distant control, the phone and the car need internet connections to Tesla's servers via cellular or WiFi signals.
Click to expand...
Thanks again for your assistance and knowledge. I am guessing you can tell that I don't know squat about all this technology stuff. Most of it is pretty much Greek to me. You should watch me trying to figure the Tesla out.....I will never figure it out completely, LOL.

I have noticed that I can walk up to the vehicle and open the door without it being "awake" on the phone. Is this what you're talking about....Bluetooth vs. WIFI? I always keep my phone in my front pocket or in my hand when approaching the vehicle.

Anyway, what is "distant control".....how far away from the router? Is internet up/down load speed much of a factor., or is it only signal strength? I am betting, at least at home, my internet connection is part of the problem. My router is on the other end of the house and, if I stand in the doorway to the garage, I sometimes can't get any response at all. I also have a Ring security light/camera up high in the front of the garage, and sometimes have trouble with it responding in a timely manner too. Would moving the router closer to the "action" help this at all? How would the affect the rest of the computers in the house? My Samsung A32 is not that old but is also not a "high end" 5G phone. Is it possible I need a better phone too?
 
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#19
@KnightRiderKit Sorry for the jargon.

Walking up to the car, the phone connects directly to the car via Bluetooth radio to unlock it. This is when having the app running can help because the phone saving battery power by sleeping or by keeping the app asleep will make it take longer to wake up and connect to the car.

The "notification shade" is the bar at the top of the phone's screen where you can pull down to access notifications like new emails. Is the Tesla "T" in that bar? When you pull down to see notifications, is there one showing the Tesla app, listing your car? This indicates the app is running in the background and able to connect to the car.

Inside the Tesla app, it has features like viewing the car's state of charge %, operating Climate, and Controls like opening the charge port. These features work whether you're near the car or far away ("distant," "remote"), as long as both your phone and your car can connect to the internet via WiFi or cellular data.

A more expensive phone is not likely to get a more reliable internet connection unless that gets you 5G. Switching mobile service providers is another way that might help.

You can improve internet connections in the garage by moving your router closer or installing a WiFi repeater or extender. Yes, moving the router could impact the computers in the house.

To evaluate those possibilities, I'd take the phone around the house and look at the WiFi signal indicator or at an app like WiFi Analyzer. You might want to get a friend to help you work through these tests and possible changes.
 
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