Bluetooth woes

[Neon001]

Just got my M3P on Saturday and I'm loving the car, but I've had no end of issues with the bluetooth functionality when pairing with my Galaxy Note 8. At first everything worked fine, but a day later it started having issues recognizing the phone when I walked up to the car. App tells me to enable then disable airplane mode on my phone to toggle bluetooth. Okay, problem solved...that time.

For the next day or two it's about 50/50 on working correctly when entering the car, and doing the above. Then something worse happens - the app disables bluetooth entirely on my phone. Now I have no connection to my watch or anything. Can't even re-enable the bluetooth on the phone. I try force stopping the Tesla app and re-enabling...still no joy. Reboot the phone, and everything comes on fine, but soon enough the Tesla app starts (without me starting it) and within minutes disables bluetooth again. Can't even go into the bluetooth menu to "forget" the car because I need to have bluetooth enabled to show the list of paired devices.

Only way to get out of this mess is to go into the car and have the car forget the phone and delete it as a key. Then repair everything and see if I can get it all to work again for another day or so.

I tried the troubleshooting process that the car recommends for bluetooth issues and sometimes one of those steps will address the issue, but it's always temporary. Researched this problem extensively online and found various tips:

Disable contact sharing with the car
Remove any special characters from contact names
Restart phone
Soft reset on car (hold both buttons on the steering wheel method)

Nothing has worked. Funny enough, my problems sound exactly like what happened here: Tesla couldn’t solve a Model 3 owners’ Bluetooth problem after 7 months. So it blamed Samsung phones. Same phone (Note 8) and everything.

I've contacted support and they ran me through the standard things (basically all of the stuff I mentioned above) and essentially gave up...basically it's a known problem and we don't have a fix. No mention of whether one is being worked...

At this point I've given up and actually switched back to my old Galaxy S7 Edge with cracked (but functional) screen, but this is not something I'm willing to live with in the long term. I can't believe I'm entertaining the notion, but I'm now looking into new phones to replace my Note 8. I have to have bluetooth to make calls from the car, and having to use the credit card to get into the car every time is not a workable solution.

So, can anyone with a Note 9 tell me if their phone has ever had these issues? I'm in the market.

 

[Hankmancini]

Continuing problems with my Android LG-G6 phone. I have had my Model 3 for 3 months. Absolutely love my Tesla. Love the IDEA of the phone key, but hate that it fails daily. My solution is to turn on airplane mode then turn it off EVERY TIME I head to my car. This works, but is frustrating. Because turning airplane mode on and off causes the phone key to work correctly every time, I think it possible to have a script to complete these actions and an icon to run the script by tapping it.

 

[jdicecco]

You can try this... Go into android settings > apps > tesla app. Make sure notifications is on to make sure app continues to run in background. Just a guess on my part

 

[Hankmancini]

You can try this... Go into android settings > apps > tesla app. Make sure notifications is on to make sure app continues to run in background. Just a guess on my part

Thanks, but did that a month or so ago. Appreciate your trying to help!

 

[OCR1]

In general we seem to hear more complaints on TMC from Android users than from iPhone (iOS) users. My impression is that Tesla has not spent as much time developing their Android app as they have the iOS version. My iPhone X has worked almost flawlessly every time.

 

[StealthP3D]

Both of our Model 3's function 100% with my Samsung S8+ and my wife's Samsung S9. It's been this way (perfect) since we took delivery of the cars last year.

 

[jdicecco]

My S8 android is flawless as well. I have had issues in the past with other apps (not Tesla) where one app woukd not work due to a conflict of some sort with another app. For another situation I had to change from google launcher to nova launcher.

Come to think of it... You should try that!

 

[9-Volt]

I was having problems with my LG G7 as well. In addition to not working as a key, once I started using Android Auto, the bluetooth would shut off.

I downloaded Bluetooth Volume Control, so that my streaming music (via Android Auto) would always play at full volume (otherwise my FM radio would blast loudly as the phone's bluetooth volume was inevitably not maxed out). That seems to be working well.

I wonder if something like this might help with your scenario to always connect your bluetooth to Tesla?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.myklos.btautoconnect&hl=en&showAllReviews=true

 

[morningstar]

I have an iphone 8plus and while I don't have issues like others have described here, I have been annoyed that it seems to take longer than I expect for it to recognize that I'm standing at the door trying to get it. I've seen other people just walk up to their car and open the door and it works flawlessly. Mine, not so much. I walk up and pull on the handle and create a sentry event because it doesn't recognize me. After pulling on the handle like 5 times it will finally unlock and open. Or sometimes I have to get my phone out and open the app and push the unlock button. Then I'll get in, pick my profile, try to put the car in gear and it tells me to put the key card over the rfid spot on the console. But then if I wait, it will realize my phone is there and I can put the car in gear. It's been frustrating enough that I'm cursing Tesla for not providing a key fob I can carry in my hand and push a button on to make the car unlock. I know they make one, but that's $150 key fob that every other car maker includes in the price of their car. Maybe I'll ask for it for xmas. At any rate, I'm learning to be more patient while I try not to look conspicuous trying to get into my own car.

 

[MattUNI]

Both of our Model 3's function 100% with my Samsung S8+ and my wife's Samsung S9. It's been this way (perfect) since we took delivery of the cars last year.

I have an S9 and it has been far from flawless. I'd say I have about an 85% chance of it working as it should with different updates being much better or worse than others. My wife also has an S9 with similar results.

I've even had a scenario where the car is connected to my phone, streaming music via my phone through bluetooth, yet it refusing to recognize it as a key to let me put it in drive, telling me to instead tap the key card. facepalm

 

[StealthP3D]

I have an S9 and it has been far from flawless. I'd say I have about an 85% chance of it working as it should with different updates being much better or worse than others. My wife also has an S9 with similar results.

I've even had a scenario where the car is connected to my phone, streaming music via my phone through bluetooth, yet it refusing to recognize it as a key to let me put it in drive, telling me to instead tap the key card. facepalm

It could be a misbehaving Bluetooth music streaming app or you might need to change your configuration setup or app permissions.

I say this because my wife's Samsung S9 has performed flawlessly through many phone updates (and of course many Tesla app and car updates). None of them has caused any problems. So, common sense says you either have an app on your phone that is corrupting the Bluetooth functionality or you don't have the app setup, power saving, and/or permissions set correctly.

 

[srs5694]

Continuing problems with my Android LG-G6 phone. I have had my Model 3 for 3 months. Absolutely love my Tesla. Love the IDEA of the phone key, but hate that it fails daily.

Among Android devices, Android 9 ("Pie") seems to be more reliable than Android 8 ("Oreo") and earlier. I use a OnePlus 5t, which was running Android 8 at the time I got my Tesla, and its phone-as-key functionality was about 75% reliable. After upgrading to Android 9, it's more like 90% reliable, and for most of the 10% of the time when it fails, those failures are associated with something obvious, like a recent Tesla software update or phone reboot.

Googling, the LG G6 is advertised as shipping with Oreo. According to Android Authority, an official Pie should be available on the LG G6 by the end of September. If you can't wait that long, you could look into hacking the phone with an unofficial LineageOS build, or perhaps some other open source Android; however, this approach is not for the faint of heart. If you're inexperienced with this sort of thing, you're as likely to brick your phone as to improve it. Also, a lot of LineageOS users are reporting Bluetooth phone call problems. (I've reverted my OnePlus from LineageOS to OnePlus's OxygenOS build of Android for this reason.)

 

[Neon001]

My latest issue is that I can't get bluetooth to work reliably for any device (including streaming music to the Model 3!) anymore while I have the Tesla Model 3 in my list of bluetooth devices. Doesn't even have to be paired. When I use my bluetooth headphones working out, or try to use a bluetooth speaker in the back yard, or any other situation, it'll work for a minute and then just stop playing music. For whatever reason leaving the display on seems to mitigate (but not completely eliminate) the problem, but this is a not a tenable solution. I can't even use spotify in the car anymore with my phone.

I'm completely fed up with the shitty bluetooth implementation in the Model 3. I'm seriously considering just removing it altogether and buying a keyfob, as much as it pains me.

 

[ceejay44]

I'm also very unpleased with my phone key and the Tesla app, though perhaps my phone and the technology is as much to blame... though yes it would've been nice to have been given a fob right off the bat!! I'm in a M3 delivered April 2019, using Samsung Galaxy S5. The phone key works perhaps 65% of the time. What is most frustrating though is no sound with the notifications. I just spent 10 minutes listening to my own car alarm before realizing it was my own car! I can't figure out how to get sound from the app to tell me such things.

 

[Dan203]

Being a developer myself I can say that iOS is a LOT easier to develop for because they provide just a small number of supported devices with tightly controlled hardware. (although with all the recent iPad variations it's getting a bit harder) But Android is like developing for a PC. There are so many hardware variations, minor OS changes made by manufacturers, etc... it makes it much harder. Although the Samsung phones are like the gold standard and most app developers will do a good job of ensuring that at least they work. So it's a little surprising that Samsun users are having issues. I kind of expect it from other brands, but I'd think Samsung would be the one they put all the testing into

 

[Hankmancini]

I continue to have problems using my LG G6 phone as a key for my Model 3. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I am on Oreo and waiting for Pie. If that does not fix the problem, I will likely try a Samsung. My wife's iPhone 6 works 100% of the time, but I much prefer the openness of my Android phone. Anytime I want to be sure that I can get into my Model 3, I turn airplane mode on and off before heading for the car and that works 100% of the time.

 

[srs5694]

I continue to have problems using my LG G6 phone as a key for my Model 3. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I am on Oreo and waiting for Pie. If that does not fix the problem, I will likely try a Samsung. My wife's iPhone 6 works 100% of the time, but I much prefer the openness of my Android phone. Anytime I want to be sure that I can get into my Model 3, I turn airplane mode on and off before heading for the car and that works 100% of the time.

FWIW, when I updated my OnePlus 5t from Android 8.1 to Android 9, the phone key became noticeably more reliable; however, it's become less reliable lately, so I'm no longer sure the improvement was because of the software update. Others have reported better phone-key reliability out of Android 9 than from earlier versions, too.

If you can't bear to wait until LG releases an Android 9 for the LG G6, you can try this unofficial LineageOS build. I don't recommend you try this unless you're pretty comfortable with this type of thing, or at least if you're willing to rush out and buy a new phone immediately (or have an older backup phone you can use) if you brick your current one. In my experience, unofficial LineageOS builds usually work OK except for one or two annoying quirks, like screen auto-brightness settings not working. OTOH, one I've tried causes my LG V20 to crash within a few minutes of booting if a SIM card is plugged in. That makes it kind of useless. On the plus side, LineageOS is missing most of the bloatware that's common in OEM Android builds.

 

[ceejay44]

but how lame is that that the default key requires that! I've got a Galaxy S5 and it's so annoying that 25% of the time the phone key doesn't work (out more irritatingly, the door opens and music plays from my phone but i can't drive! )

I continue to have problems using my LG G6 phone as a key for my Model 3. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I am on Oreo and waiting for Pie. If that does not fix the problem, I will likely try a Samsung. My wife's iPhone 6 works 100% of the time, but I much prefer the openness of my Android phone. Anytime I want to be sure that I can get into my Model 3, I turn airplane mode on and off before heading for the car and that works 100% of the time.