Help: Honor 10 [phone] worked fine as key on previous model 3 car but fails most times on my new model 3

[wenz]

Hi,

I recently sold my 2020 SR+. I used my Honor 10 (Android) phone as key and it worked fine. Not perfectly, that is not all the time but I'd say more than 98% of the cases, without me having to do anything (like taking the phone out, or starting the app).
Now, only a few weeks later I still use the same phone but it fails to work most of the time on my new 2021 SR+.

The phone simply fails to connect automatically to the car. I can take it out and put in in and out of flight mode and that seems to trigger it to connect but obviously that is frustarting and akward.

Anybody got an Honor 10 and similar problems and solved them?

What I tried so far:
1) Restarted the phone
2) Reset the car
3) Reinstalled the app

Put still I cannot get it to work. Which is really frustrating because as I said the same phone worked just fine on my previous Model 3 just weeks ago

Many thx for ideas or solution help!

 

[jjrandorin]

I dont use an android phone, which I assume this is, but would recommend focusing on any settings that the phone may have to optimize power for connections etc. Your new car is a new connection to your phone, and you may have to turn on / allow settings to let bluetooth be on at all times, on that connection.

Make sure there are no settings to "optimize" the tesla app

 

[wenz]

Thx for the quick reply. Yes it is an Android Phone.
I have paired t with the car.
My point is that I did not change anything in the phone settings which worked fine with the previous Tesla I had.
I checked all the settings and they seem reasonably fine to me.

Hoping that there is actually someone using a Honor phone with a Tesla too and could point me in the right direction on what specifically to try.

 

[jjrandorin]

Thx for the quick reply. Yes it is an Android Phone.
I have paired t with the car.
My point is that I did not change anything in the phone settings which worked fine with the previous Tesla I had.
I checked all the settings and they seem reasonably fine to me.

Hoping that there is actually someone using a Honor phone with a Tesla too and could point me in the right direction on what specifically to try.

You actually did change something. The new car is a brand new connection, and many times the defaults for connections may not be sufficient to not "optimize" the connection.

I dont have that phone, but "my day job" is troubleshooting IT devices for a living. you think you havent changed anything, but as I said, the new car is a brand new connection, so the fact it worked on the other car means its capable of working, not that the phone setup the new connection automatically, properly.

 

[wenz]

Okay, assuming you are right, then my problem is I can't seem to figure out, what changed. As far as I am aware there has been no update of the android version in the past weeks.
And I did not (consciously) changed any of the phone settings. Againg it would be great if there is another Tesla owner using a Honor (10) phone to share any tips. hx.

 

[jjrandorin]

Since it appears you only want help from someone with this phone, I will just mention the last point and wish you good luck.

In your "things you tried", you dont mention if you tried the first thing that bluetooth issues normally call for, which is deleting the connection to the phone in the car AND deleting the connection to the car from the phone. You mention you reset the car, and re started the phone, but you dont mention that you actually deleted the connection from both the phone and the car and started over with pairing it.

Re installing the app doesnt delete the connection, neither does rebooting the phone.

In any case, good luck.

 

[wenz]

Yes, I had also
4) Paired (redid) the connection again.

And I will take any help I can get. I am very grateful for you trying and spending the time. I loved the phone as a key for the past 6 months and sincerely miss it now -also my wife hates to wait when i have to get the key card out or open it manually via the app now. It used to be so much easier.

 

[PianoAl]

My phone intermittently fails to connect with the car. Sometimes it works great for a week, and then another time it will be problematic. Perhaps that is what is happening with yours. In other words, it's unrelated to getting a new car. The failures are just random. Correlation is not causation.

Here's an interesting data point: yesterday both my wife and I had our phones out but the car would connect to neither. Perhaps this suggests the problem is on the car side.

 

[Matsayz]

So does "paired (redid) the connection again" mean that you deleted the phone from the car as a "key" or no? If not then follow instructions below.

Delete the phone "key" from the car, then... reboot the car, "close" the Tesla app, reboot the phone, finally....add the phone as a new "key". See if that does the trick.

What software version of the car are you on? I'm not familiar with this model of Android phone, there's gotta be a setting in there in regards to Bluetooth about staying active or something. Is there a way to "forget" a bluetooth connection on this phone? Maybe try searching Google for Android specific posts about the Tesla app. Until this is fixed or fixes itself in an update I'd keep at least one keycard on your person at all times. Good luck!

 

[wenz]

Thx Matsayz, I will try that exact sequence of actions and see if it does work thereafter.
The car is on version 2021.4.18

 

[Matsayz]

Thx Matsayz, I will try that exact sequence of actions and see if it does work thereafter.
The car is on version 2021.4.18

Good luck, I’d say it’s the car’s software rather than your phone. Tesla makes little tweaks to the software that we’ll never know about so don’t assume it’s a YOU problem. Also, 2021.4.18.X has been a mess of bugs…

 

[Gasaraki]

Hi,

I recently sold my 2020 SR+. I used my Honor 10 (Android) phone as key and it worked fine. Not perfectly, that is not all the time but I'd say more than 98% of the cases, without me having to do anything (like taking the phone out, or starting the app).
Now, only a few weeks later I still use the same phone but it fails to work most of the time on my new 2021 SR+.

The phone simply fails to connect automatically to the car. I can take it out and put in in and out of flight mode and that seems to trigger it to connect but obviously that is frustarting and akward.

Anybody got an Honor 10 and similar problems and solved them?

What I tried so far:
1) Restarted the phone
2) Reset the car
3) Reinstalled the app

Put still I cannot get it to work. Which is really frustrating because as I said the same phone worked just fine on my previous Model 3 just weeks ago

Many thx for ideas or solution help!

Please disable the power optimization options for the tesla app and your bluetooth connection.

 

[wenz]

Thx Matsayz, I will try that exact sequence of actions and see if it does work thereafter.

Did that. Did not solve the problem

Please disable the power optimization options for the tesla app and your bluetooth connection.

For Tesla App it is disabled. For Bluetootth connections there does not seem to be a setting. I checked under System Apps, But no Bluetooth App listed.

 

[wenz]

Short update: The problem is at the phone not at the car.
I got to test it with an older Honor 6, and that worked, therefore this car has no problems in principle with Huawei phones, only with my specific Honor 10.

 

[wenz]

Solved: Solution: Deinstalled Corona-Warn App (a German goverrnment Covid tracking alert app). This seem to interfer with Bluetooth somehow. I would have never had the idea that this app might be related to the problem but another user suggested deinstalling it and now phone as a key works. How reliable I don't know yet, It's only been 4 days but obviously much better than before.

 

[jjrandorin]

Solved: Solution: Deinstalled Corona-Warn App (a German goverrnment Covid tracking alert app). This seem to interfer with Bluetooth somehow. I would have never had the idea that this app might be related to the problem but another user suggested deinstalling it and now phone as a key works. How reliable I don't know yet, It's only been 4 days but obviously much better than before.

Now that is interesting information. That app is likely a contact tracing tracking app. Some of those work by (once a person logs into them), having the apps log when you get close to someone else with that app open. The idea is, to try to track other people you (or someone else) may have been in contact with, for notification purposes, if you get covid (or if someone who you were in contact with gets it).

I only know this as the place I work has a covid contact tracking app, and it works with bluetooth. Of course, these type apps are only useful if the people you are around also have the app, so it works "better" (relative term, not getting into any discussions around whether this should be done or not), in a corporate (or government) setting where people are either encouraged, or mandated to install and use such an app.

 

[wenz]

@jjrandorin
Yes it is a contact tracing app. It needs to run in the background.
The same users who gave me the hint also suggested to try turning off "exposure notification settings".
However that was not necessary in my case as deinstalling the app automatically turned off "exposure notification settings"
Anybody looking for this, here is how to turn this off manually

Turn off Exposure Notifications
Exposure Notifications are off by default.
If you opted in and changed your mind, you can turn them off in your Android phone’s Settings, or uninstall the public health app.
Important: By turning off this feature, you won’t be notified if you’ve been exposed to COVID-19.

1. On your Android device, open the Settings app.
2. Tap Google
   
   COVID-19 Exposure Notifications.
3. Turn off Exposure Notifications.

 

[wenz]

BTW the mentioned Corona Warn App has 10+ million downloads so it does not seem to generally prevent phone as a key for Tesla use. There must be some additional factors involved which caused the problem on my phone

Corona-Warn-App – Apps bei Google Play

Gemeinsam Corona bekämpfen

play.google.com

 

[GtiMart]

Not an answer to your problem but additional info. You probably install Android updates when they are available. Some of those change the behavior of energy saving features. It might be coincidental with you changing cars and might just be a difference in the phone is what I'm saying.

After a Tesla app update, the app has been stopped for the update, it never works automatically. The app must be manually launched on the phone. I'm just saying this to show that there can be multiple reasons for the failure.