MissyBissy

I switched over to an Andriod (Samsung S4) after 5 years on iPhones and have been happy so far. Well up until last week.

Sometime last week an update was pushed out to my phone and suddenly my phone Bluetooth connection to my car keeps disconnecting and reconnecting. So here I am trying to have a conversation and the Bluetooth disconnects and suddenly music starts blasting and I grab my phone and shout out "are you still there???" and then the Bluetooth reconnects and the music stops and I can hear the person I'm talking to through the speakers. It's very frustrating. Happens every few minutes. Does the same thing while I'm listening to music.

To top it all off, one of my favorite features on my car is the ability to have my text message read to me while driving. I spent a decent amount of time reprogramming my 15 text replies so that I can answer "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries" or "that's what she said" with a couple of quick clicks. Suddenly my messages aren't coming through. This breaks my heart.

I upgraded to my car after 10 years in a mommy mover minivan. At this point in my life my greatest joys are being able to have a long conversation with my bff every morning while stuck in traffic, being able to listen to songs like "talk dirty to me" and "caress me down" when the mood strikes and the kids aren't in the car, and listening to my car try to read me messages that have the word "*****" in them - because I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy.

I don't know if the issue is the S4, AT&T or Lexi. Since it was working fine last week before the forced update, I'm leaning towards the issue not being my car. I tried calling the dealership from the car this morning but between the Bluetooth disconnection, the switchboard roulette and getting disconnected when I was transferred, I pretty much gave up. I figured I'd check here to see if anyone else is having any similar issues.

I'm more than happy to give up the S4 and/or AT&T if that's where the issue is. Lexi is staying no matter what

Mike728

I had a similar issue when my MotoX updated. I deleted the phone and reinitialized the Bluetooth connection. Now, all I'm missing is emails, which I can live with.

MissyBissy

I already deleted the blue tooth connection on both ends and paired them again. Still not working. Didn't realize it could read emails too since mine never did that.... that could be fun.

offroad200

First, kudos on the Monty Python reference! Second, I have been hearing of issues with Kit Kat. I'm assuming that's what you upgraded to. Have you tried a hard reset on your phone? If not, it's a great place to start since you have updated the phone. I'm not talking about a factory reset that wipes everything out. On my Razr, you hold the volume down button + power button until it restarts. Not sure how to do it on an S4. It also helps to completely power down your phone on a consistent basis like every few days. It's basically a computer you can talk on.

MissyBissy

LOL I restart my phone every other day or so but I haven't done a full power off lately - we shall see if that helps. I believe this update was to Kit Kat. Haven't figured out how to keep it from auto updating.

I also went through and deleted a bunch of old messages to see if that helps. I did hear something about how this update causes issues with data written to the SD card - and the SD card was one of the reasons why I went with this phone in the first place.

atoyota

It isn't the car, it is the phone. I have Android 4.4 (not samsung) and don't have the issue of it dropping connectivity and reconnecting, but I do rarely get "insufficient connectivity" when I am leaving an area (work) where I drive thru areas of wifi connectivity (our parking garage is very tall and all of the floors of the office building have wifi that bleeds out to the garage just enough to keep the phone trying to connect to the wifi. If I turned off the wifi antenna whenever I got the insufficient connectivity error, it resolved itself.

When the phone I had just previous to the phone I have now got the kit-kat update the "insufficient connectivity" problem happened very often for the first 3 or 4 days to the point I was angry. I called/emailed Lexus. They had a guy call me back and we went back and forth and he acknowledged that there were at the time only a hand full of devices that were running Android 4.4 at that time. He said there were know kit-kat issues and that they were having no problems with the iphone. He diligently called me back every time i reported the problem but after a few days the problem just went away. About a month later, I got a new phone that was issued with kit-kat already installed and didn't have any issues - just the the occasional issue near the office.

I love my android devices, but developers do have an advantage with the iphone in that they have only one hardware and software platform to develop to. There are so many Android phones with different hardware configurations and firmware/software that make it almost impossible to know all the potential conflicts.

Anyway, my problem on my HTC M7 with Kit Kat update did resolve itself after a few days and the HTC M8 I replaced it with has had no problems at all (so far). I hope MissyBissy, that yours resolves itself too. Lexus wasn't very much help in the end for me although they did return calls and at least try.

EDIT: BTW, the email only works with the stock android email app not with the GMAIL app. This isn't a Lexus problem either as I have a couple of other accessories that only work with the stock email app.

lesz

I have been using an S4 since last fall. The phone has had Android 4.4 for at least a couple of months, and I have not had any instances of dropped calls, interrupted calls, loss of connectivity, etc. Thus, I'm skeptical about whether the problem is the result an issue with the S4 and KitKat.

When connectivity is lost, is it the result of the inability of the car to communicate with the phone via Bluetooth, or is it the result of a loss of connectivity between the phone and the cell tower? If the OP is driving in areas where the signal between the phone and the tower is occasionally briefly interrupted, I wonder if that could be the cause of the problem. I believe that, even if the Bluetooth connection between the phone and the car is functioning properly, if the car is not detecting a phone connection, which might be happening when the phone loses contact with the cell tower, the car will show the "phone not connected" message.



I didn't realize until now that the ES had the capability to read emails. I do use the standard Android email app. Do I need to change some setting on the ES, on the phone, or in the email client to enable this feature?

atoyota

To be truthful the only emails i receive through enform are from my hotmail account which is rarely used. Since the GMAIL app doesn't allow you to add non-GMAIL email types except through POP3 I just assumed it was the native email app that was pushing the hotmail email through to enform since the native email app is the one I use for my non-GMAIL email accounts.

I didn't have to do anything in the setup of enform on the phone or in the car to receive those emails but I can tell you that I don't really like it since it is a huge distraction to try to hear the electronic reading of the email and there is no real safe way to reply even if you could. My opinion, but I just leave texts and emails to be read and replied to later or pull over to reply using the text or email app on the phone. Life is too short.

mugopain

I am having the exact same issue. Phone keeps disconnecting. Mine does not disconnect during a call though. I have a Galaxy Note 3, ES350, and AT&T. I was working fine up until i accepted a phone update a little over a week. ago.

I have deleted the BT connection multiple times and deleted my phone multiple times. I have also tried different cables in the car and tried without having it connected to the cigarette lighter and USB ports. Nothing seems to work. Probably going to have to wipe my phone and find an older version of the Android OS and put that back on there.

offroad200

Try this. Delete phone from car and car from phone. Repair, accept the pairing, accept the contact transfer (PBAP) and check "do not ask again", don't accept the message access (MAP) and check "do not ask again". I believe this will fix the constant connecting/disconnecting. You will lose access to texts obviously at least until there is an update to Kit Kat to fix it.

offroad200

Also, to the people not having problems, it seems to be carrier dependent. Sure it's Kit Kat, but even that will vary by phone manufacturer, model and carrier. Each carrier seems to want the OS tweaked their own way. This is the one good thing about iPhones (even though I prefer Droid). There aren't 20 different versions of software. Haha.

mugopain

Probably a tweak so you don't txt and drive perhaps? I'll give it a shot and let you know tomorrow. Thanks.

mugopain

Offroad200 - Looks like that worked for me. so far today the phone has not disconnected at all. Thanks.

MissyBissy

It's not disconnecting and reconnecting anymore but it's still not notifying me of messages. Still not happy about this.

offroad200

It won't notify you of messages if you followed my instructions. Simply because you're not allowing MAP access by the car. I did find this quote:

from this thread:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/gs-...ml#post8556720

So maybe a fix is on the way soon.