sfirley

I leased a 2015 GS350 F Sport 10 days ago and am very disappointed in the connectivity of the enform app suite. I got everything set up and linked all the apps to enform. Every time I start the car, Pandora says "tether error" and the other apps also do not connect/play. I have contacted the 800 customer service for enform and all they keep telling me is to delete the enform app, turn phone off, turn phone on, reinstall enform and try again. I even have the wifi turned off and of course the bluetooth is on. This can't be the only work around for this issue to delete the app every time. The enform app says it is connected but nothing happens. The apps, such as pandora, slacker etc, are open on my phone. I have found that disconnecting enform from the car and reconnecting seems to work--but it seems crazy that I would have to go through that exercise every time I get in the car. I use an iphone 5s and my ios is up to date. Any suggestions for how to fix this issue?

marjenmill

Take it to your dealer, don't call the 800#.
My dealer had someone in service who was dedicated to understanding the app. They helped a lot.

With my 2015 GS I use a Samsung Galaxy S4 android phone and found that there can be times when I get a 'tether error' too. It seems to be related to a weak signal to my cell, but it doesn't always happen.

I can always correct it by waiting until I'm in a good cell reception area and then using the 'mouse' to select Pandora on the dash screen, then selecting a Pandora station I want...then it re-tethers and works fine. This is 2 extra steps, but at least I'm not rebooting my phone or re-installing the app.

wsykes

Enform worked a lot better before the last upgrade. I have a Samsung S3. I have come to find out, if my battery goes dead or I restart the phone, I have to start Enform manually. If you have the error before you start Enform manually, just leave apps mode. Go to dvd, usb, BT, etc, then back to apps. It should connect. Once Enform connects, it will always connect unless the battery goes dead again or I restart the phone. Then I just start Enform manually again. I hope that helps...

Atomic350F

They just released a new update, curious if you are still having these issues?

paul325740

drove for 2 hours last night. I couldn't listen Pandora or iheart radio last night. very disappointed ! upgrade did not make any better!

paul325740

I just got back home this afternoon. Before I head back. I did try closed Pandora app and iheart radio on my iPhone before start my car. Wow! Pandora and iheart radio were working perfectly all 2 hours on the road. I wish my salesman tell me about this when I took my car last week.

Atomic350F

Heck yeah, great news... seems like they are actually addressing some major issues here!!

I gotta try Pandora, I've been "Slacking" on that one (using Slacker that is!)

edittman1

Better question is:

How can I disable everything but the radio and bluetooth? I don't use any of the others and cycling is a pain.

jkeller

you can just push the radio button on the head unit. it will go to the last on used, sat fm am. and media for bluetooth iPod apps.

edittman1

Good tip.

Still would like to disable those somehow. I use the steering wheel a lot..

kf6bbl

Old thread bump, same comments really, but I would like to offer my suggestions...

I get 'tether error' about 50% of the time when starting the vehicle. Honestly I consider this a safety issue and this is one of the most unsafe cars I have ever owned because it causes the driver to spend a lot of time focused on the electronics, their phone, and troubleshooting a problem, instead of driving safely. It usually takes me about 2 minutes to resolve the problems while driving. Since I got the car in Dec 15, there has never been an app update by Lexus. I've called them at least 3 times about this.

First I'll tell everyone what I know about the problem, and then I will tell you what I think is the best workaround:

The problem - In my case, and probably most others, my phone (iPhone6plus) is on Wifi when in the office and at home, and when I get in the car, it is still on WiFi but marginal signal. When the vehicle first starts, the Enform App Suite app encounters some issues getting data from either Lexus or Pandora, and goes into 'tether error' mode. The bug is that it will never retry. On the other hand if you turn off wifi on your phone before starting the car, it usually works fine, although I have seen it happen. I think the main bug is lack of retries in the app.
I have done all the crazy stuff that customer service tells you, deleting the app, unpairing the phone, setting it all up with wifi off, but this does nothing to correct the actual problem.
I have also figured out that all of this is really just smoke and mirrors, at least the Pandora app. What I believe is really happening is the Enform app on the mobile device is actually the pandora player, and it is merely streaming decoded audio plus meta data (album art and titles) to the head unit. This is very different from the app simply being a data tethering device as the marketing suggests. I've seen some other strange bugs that I won't go into, but gave me some debug information to conclude this.

The workaround - The simple but very annoying and unsafe workaround is to close the Enform app on your mobile device, and restart it. The head unit will reconnect and continue playing Pandora.
However the better workaround, in my opinion, is to just dump the whole Enform app (not the remote control one, just the app suite one). Then simply use whatever app you want directly on your phone, and use normal BlueTooth to send the audio to the head unit. Few advantages to this:

• Works 100% of the time
• No speed based limitation of your playlist mgmnt
• Much faster meta data and album art display

I do loose the ability to thumbs up/down tracks from the car's 'mouse', but it's all much less frustrating.

I really wish that whoever develops these apps would reachout to us that have problems. I feel like we can give them the information they need to quickly solve the problem, but my hunch is that they have no one working on this anymore. Unless it's setting cars on fire or deploying airbags, we're all a bunch of chumps with first world problems, lol.

jklangen99

I too dumped the enform pandora app and use the pandora app on my iPhone via the bluetooth connection and it works very well most of the time. Said differently, I do not try to start Pandora from either the enform app on my iPhone or the screen in the car. I too kept getting tether errors and very low volume compared to radio or satellite. I do sometimes have start Pandora from my phone which is a bit unsafe but most of the time, it picks up where it left off. Once in a while lately it connects to my iphone playlist rather than the last Pandora channel I was listening to.