I know this has become common wisdom to toggle BT or airplane mode. However, I would like to suggest something different. When mine does not work I just stand there holding the door. Eventually it works without toggling or anything. So while it may appear that toggling is fixing the problem, it may just be the passage of time. If I get impatient I will use the app but otherwise I have not toggled and found that the BT eventually works.
Phone as Key Issues
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I know this has become common wisdom to toggle BT or airplane mode. However, I would like to suggest something different. When mine does not work I just stand there holding the door. Eventually it works without toggling or anything. So while it may appear that toggling is fixing the problem, it may just be the passage of time. If I get impatient I will use the app but otherwise I have not toggled and found that the BT eventually works.
i still maintain that anyone who insists they have never had any issues is full of sh*t.
at least three new "phone as key sucks" threads in the past 24 hours on this forum that i've seen so far. i wonder if tesla is listening...i'm guessing the answer is "no" considering they released a fob without passive entry.
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GPinzone
Member
I can tell you that I've had zero issues with my Samsung Note 8. I ensured the app has all the permissions available and it's whitelisted to ensure the OS doesn't attempt to kill/sleep the app to save the battery.
again, does "i've had zero issues" mean you have never had to stand there and wait even 2-3 seconds holding the door handle in while waiting for the car to unlock? because if you have, that is not "i've had zero issues." that's not how it is supposed to work - it's supposed to be instant.
same thing goes for you though, if you really have had no problems ever (100% success for real) then please contact tesla and volunteer your phone/car logs so they can fix it for all of us.
GPinzone
Member
Correct. That never happened.
"Hello, Tesla support? Hello. I'd like to report no problems whatsoever. Yes, everything works perfectly especially using my phone as a key. Please look into it. Thank you. Bye bye."
I am looking for help..Have gotten no response from Tesla.
Here is information sent to Tesla..
I have apparently corrupted my phone key file.
I have been having trouble getting the phone key to be reliable and have made many changes to my phone including a phone reset and install only the Tesla app. I setup the phone key multiple times before I realized that I probably should be deleting the previous phone key from the Tesla "lock" menu. I deleted several entries with success, however when I selected another entry for deletion the authentication would not complete. The pop-up window requesting key card placement on the console will not go away. The only way to remove the key card pop-up is a scroll key reboot.
After the screen reboot everything seems to be normal. The key card can be read at the door and on the console. Going back into the lock menu to try and delete more phone keys results in the screen again locking up with the request for the card key to be placed on the console.
Please help,
Here is information sent to Tesla..
I have apparently corrupted my phone key file.
I have been having trouble getting the phone key to be reliable and have made many changes to my phone including a phone reset and install only the Tesla app. I setup the phone key multiple times before I realized that I probably should be deleting the previous phone key from the Tesla "lock" menu. I deleted several entries with success, however when I selected another entry for deletion the authentication would not complete. The pop-up window requesting key card placement on the console will not go away. The only way to remove the key card pop-up is a scroll key reboot.
After the screen reboot everything seems to be normal. The key card can be read at the door and on the console. Going back into the lock menu to try and delete more phone keys results in the screen again locking up with the request for the card key to be placed on the console.
Please help,
if you're serious that you have never had a single issue, go into your tesla account and press the ask a question button. escalate it and let them know, and offer to let them pull your car's logs. there are enough of us who can never get this to work that if there's even a single person it's working for 100% of the time, they should be able to look at that and try to figure out what you have done that is causing everyone else issues.
you are in the EXTREME minority if you've never had a single issue. it would be worthwhile for them to be able to look at logs for a working case (i say this as a software engineer myself).
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JES2
Member
You can go back a 40 or 50 pages on this thread, and you will see me as one of the posters legitimately concerned about the phone's reliability as a key before I got my car. I've had my 3 for three months. I have an I-Phone8, and have had four software upgrades. I recall maybe twice having to wait 3 to 4 seconds for the car to open the door. It probably had more to do with where my phone was located in my bag at the time. The phone has worked flawlessly for me. I reach for the door and it opens, even the back doors for my son. I have never had to use the app to open the door, but I have had to use it to open the frunk and trunk. If I had a FOB, then I would probably use it for that.
Now, that is just my experience. That doesn't mean I have changed my opinion at all on the matter. I think I have been very lucky, but I also think that the Apple phones simply have had less problems. They need a FOB that matches the best FOBs out there today. I know that just because I have had a solid experience so far, does not mean that I won't run into problems down the road. Plus, just because I have had success, if others have not, then we should all be pushing for a positive solution for everyone.
And, there still is the issue of losing the phone or it dying one day. Key FOBs are just simply more reliable, and I would like one available just in case. FOBs are easier to keep track of, I misplaced one of my cards already. I'm sure it is in a stack of papers somewhere...
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diamond.g
Active Member
Have I had zero problems no but the problems are certainly a lot less then they used to be.
I cannot recall the last time I had to use my card to get in. Hopefully it will continue to improve.
These are the settings I'm using for my Samsung S8.
Love the way the car drives, at least for the 150 miles that I've had it.
Didn't really like the way it locked me out after I put bags in the back seat for 4:30am trip to O'Hare. Neither phone nor card worked. But car left back window down enough for me to reach in and open door. Had to Lyft to airport. Tesla came and towed it, eventually replaced some geegaw.
Last night, phone unlooked car fine. But when I got in the car made me put the card on the console. There was actually a message on the console to do so.
Some time you bleed on the cutting edge I suppose. iPhone 7 running 12.1 Tesla v. 2018.42.4
Didn't really like the way it locked me out after I put bags in the back seat for 4:30am trip to O'Hare. Neither phone nor card worked. But car left back window down enough for me to reach in and open door. Had to Lyft to airport. Tesla came and towed it, eventually replaced some geegaw.
Last night, phone unlooked car fine. But when I got in the car made me put the card on the console. There was actually a message on the console to do so.
Some time you bleed on the cutting edge I suppose. iPhone 7 running 12.1 Tesla v. 2018.42.4
ok, i've been trying to figure this nonsense out for the past few days...i've come up with something. maybe. this will be kinda long-winded, so bear with me.
i downloaded a few different BLE scanner apps that run in the background and continuously scan. here's what i found...
first: according to the scanning apps and the data they're seeing from the car, the beacons on the car are ibeacons. could possibly explain why android is having so many more issues than iphone. not 100% sure on that, but i figured i'd throw it out there.
if i keep them scanning in the background, it seems for the most part that the phone as key works more often than not. not always, but better than it has been.
i'm playing with one now that has an option for "auto-connect" and i'm trying it with auto-connect turned on for all four BLE beacons on the car to see if that helps.
combine that with one time in the past few days where walk away lock still failed on me - i'm thinking to myself i wonder why that would happen. here's what i think is going on: if you look at the locks section under settings in the car, the phone key should say active. occasionally, even after using the phone key to unlock/drive away, it will still go inactive. if you happen to exit the car while the phone and car have lost the connection, walk away lock fails because it thinks you haven't used the phone key.
another question now is: why the hell does it keep losing the connection, and how do we prevent that? i get losing the connection when you're away from the car and having it struggle to reconnect when you come back in range, but why and how would it be losing the connection while you're in the car and driving?
i downloaded a few different BLE scanner apps that run in the background and continuously scan. here's what i found...
first: according to the scanning apps and the data they're seeing from the car, the beacons on the car are ibeacons. could possibly explain why android is having so many more issues than iphone. not 100% sure on that, but i figured i'd throw it out there.
if i keep them scanning in the background, it seems for the most part that the phone as key works more often than not. not always, but better than it has been.
i'm playing with one now that has an option for "auto-connect" and i'm trying it with auto-connect turned on for all four BLE beacons on the car to see if that helps.
combine that with one time in the past few days where walk away lock still failed on me - i'm thinking to myself i wonder why that would happen. here's what i think is going on: if you look at the locks section under settings in the car, the phone key should say active. occasionally, even after using the phone key to unlock/drive away, it will still go inactive. if you happen to exit the car while the phone and car have lost the connection, walk away lock fails because it thinks you haven't used the phone key.
another question now is: why the hell does it keep losing the connection, and how do we prevent that? i get losing the connection when you're away from the car and having it struggle to reconnect when you come back in range, but why and how would it be losing the connection while you're in the car and driving?
nevermind. I just got out of the car with the phone key still labeled as active, and walk away lock still didn't work. this is pure madness.
edit: now I just got out of the car with the key inactive, and it did lock. FML, I don't know what else to do at this point.
edit: now I just got out of the car with the key inactive, and it did lock. FML, I don't know what else to do at this point.
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Up until two days ago, I hadn't experienced a single issue with my iPhone X opening the car during the 5+ weeks that I have owned the car. The car would always respond and unlock immediately when I engaged the outside door handle. Zero issues.
However, starting 2 days ago, I now end up waiting after engaging the driver's car handle for the car to respond and unlock the door. The interior screen will light up indicating that I need to use the key card, so the car appears to be awake, but yet will not unlock. Sometimes I can walk around to another door (like the passenger door) and it will respond immediately despite that the driver's door entry attempt failed moments early. Once I successfully enter through another door, the failed door will open without hesitation. Although I even experienced a case where my first attempt to enter the car was opening the truck, which worked flawlessly (no hesitation). But immediately after closing the truck, I was unable to open the driver's door. Why did it grant me entry to the truck, yet not grant me entry to the car seconds later? The issue isn't limited to the driver'd door for me either. I almost feel like at least one of the doors is selected at random to not work on entry attempt. I may have just gotten lucky the first 5 weeks that the "selected" door was never the driver's door. Shrug.
So far it always successfully locks on me when I walk away from the car. Hopefully that continues to work without issue. *crosses fingers*.
I wasn't tempted to get a fob before... but if this keeps up, I just may. I still need to experiment with reboots on both my phone and car to see if anything changes.
However, starting 2 days ago, I now end up waiting after engaging the driver's car handle for the car to respond and unlock the door. The interior screen will light up indicating that I need to use the key card, so the car appears to be awake, but yet will not unlock. Sometimes I can walk around to another door (like the passenger door) and it will respond immediately despite that the driver's door entry attempt failed moments early. Once I successfully enter through another door, the failed door will open without hesitation. Although I even experienced a case where my first attempt to enter the car was opening the truck, which worked flawlessly (no hesitation). But immediately after closing the truck, I was unable to open the driver's door. Why did it grant me entry to the truck, yet not grant me entry to the car seconds later? The issue isn't limited to the driver'd door for me either. I almost feel like at least one of the doors is selected at random to not work on entry attempt. I may have just gotten lucky the first 5 weeks that the "selected" door was never the driver's door. Shrug.
So far it always successfully locks on me when I walk away from the car. Hopefully that continues to work without issue. *crosses fingers*.
I wasn't tempted to get a fob before... but if this keeps up, I just may. I still need to experiment with reboots on both my phone and car to see if anything changes.
I've had trunk work and driver's door fail in that order quite a few times. Really maddening because at first you're like "YES! IT WORKED ON FIRST TRY!" and then you close the trunk, walk to the driver's door.... fail. #@(%
Ditto to the last 2 posts. I have exactly the those symptoms. Pixel 2.
There are issues with Android 8.1 and higher with screen off Bluetooth le scanning. With my phone in my pocket the ambient display turns off due to proximity sensor.
If I take phone out of my pocket and the ambient display is on (phone still locked) door works 95% of the time first try.
There are issues with Android 8.1 and higher with screen off Bluetooth le scanning. With my phone in my pocket the ambient display turns off due to proximity sensor.
If I take phone out of my pocket and the ambient display is on (phone still locked) door works 95% of the time first try.
I have the same problem here on Android 7. It's not just a "8.1 and higher" problem.
Though that's just half the problem being the phone side, sometimes the car just isn't awake, and takes 10 seconds or longer to even prompt for RFID... after which the phone might finally connect (or not, if it's also being dumb).
Possibly even if the phone was more active on BLE while screen off it wouldn't matter (as it might somehow wake the car as you approach reliably, and thus both are working as intended)....
I think this might be onto something, the key has gotten more reliable since I started running a BLE scanner continuously in the background. not perfect yet, but noticeably better.
the real problem I've noticed is that the car doesn't hold the connection to the phone even while being driven. if you bring up the locks screen while you're driving the car, you'll likely see the phone key go back and forth between active and not active a bunch...I have no clue how to resolve that.
In the last 2-3 days We’ve also had problems with the phone (iPhone XS) not recognizing once in the vehicle and then needing the card.
I turned off the walk away lock first thing. For me it was annoying walking to my car in the garage and it being locked then having to go back in the house and get my phone that I don’t carry around after 6pm. We also had a few times that it wouldn’t lock when I walked away. So I’ve been using the app as a key fob to lock and unlock since I got the car and it works well enough.
I turned off the walk away lock first thing. For me it was annoying walking to my car in the garage and it being locked then having to go back in the house and get my phone that I don’t carry around after 6pm. We also had a few times that it wouldn’t lock when I walked away. So I’ve been using the app as a key fob to lock and unlock since I got the car and it works well enough.
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