Android Auto connection on RC300h 2020

[DavidCM]

I have recently bought the above with the Mark Levinson system and all is working fine-very pleased.However I cannot get my phone (motorola edge 20 lite) to connect to Android Auto.It connects very briefly -for about 1 or 2 seconds then disconnects then constantly shuttles on and off.

Ihave tried the obvious things-different cables,re installing AA on the phone to no avail.My wifes Samsung phone easily establishes contact and holds it. Any Ideas anybody,please?

[Linas.P]

Very hard to say what is causing this, but it is quite clear it would be something to do with your phone (as it works on other phone). My speculation could be that the phone is build around MediaTek CPU, which is not as common and not as widely supported as Qualcomm (Snapdragon) or Samsung (Exynos), I have seen many reports on various apps crashing on MediaTek including Android-Auto. As well at work (I look after internet banking project) most of issue we have with our app not working or crashing usually happens on entry level or Chinese phones (like Oppo, Xiaomi, Huawei, OnePlus etc.), Motorola being both Chinese and entry-level in your case would be something prone to compatibility issues. Not much I can advise - you can try removing the phone from car navigation, resetting the phone (which means backing-up all the data) and trying to link it again, but if it is CPU compatibility issue then it may not get fixed anyway. Kind of sad that nowadays there are no variety of really competitive and good quality Android phones apart of Samsung (HTC, LG and Sony kind of gone). 

[DavidCM]

Thank you Linas.I,ll try again to get through to someone intelligent at Motorola ...probably a lost cause..why do these large organisations make it so  difficult for customers to speak to someone who can help,rather than recite off a script?!

 

[Herbie]

13 hours ago, Linas.P said:

As well at work (I look after internet banking project) most of issue we have with our app not working or crashing usually happens on entry level or Chinese phones (like Oppo, Xiaomi, Huawei, OnePlus etc.) [...] Kind of sad that nowadays there are no variety of really competitive and good quality Android phones apart of Samsung (HTC, LG and Sony kind of gone). 

I see what you do for a living Linas but I have to take issue with your assessment and leap to the defence of Xiaomi.

In our close family we have five Xiaomi phones and never had a problem with doing anything on any of them. All work with the respective banking apps and all work with Android Auto. They are all stable, all audio is clear, they all take great photos and so on.

My point is, there really is no need whatsoever to pay huge amounts of money on big name phones these days. The low-mid range phones have really come on in leaps and bounds and I think it's only 'brand snobbery' that keeps the big names at the top.

Having said all that, an Iphone is an Iphone and that's it. Given the sheer number of Android makes and models out there, compatibility issues must be an absolute nightmare to solve.

[Linas.P]

I have nothing personally against them, I can only speak from statistical point of view about the issues they have. I would say that majority of our clients use either Samsung 24% phones or iPhones 75% (I personally hate iPhones and apple products overall despite using them everyday), the rest of the brands takes-up 1% of share and if we ever have any issues it is with that 1%. Now that may be simply "self-fulfilling prophesy" - being in 1% they are simply never prioritised for testing, so apps crash not inherently because it is bad software or hardware, but because people developing apps never tested and optimised the apps to work on those phones. But this is kind of irrelevant - if android-auto crashes on this certain phone, there is nothing one can do, it is not like you going to fix the bug in android-auto to stop it, even if it is actually fault of android-auto.

Why I segregate Chinese phones? well because they are not officially supported by google, because most of google products are banned in China. So despite most of these companies claiming that they use Android, the version they use is not officially supported and custom to them. It is almost like having pirated Windows on PC - when it is not supported by it's actual creator it is never a good sign and it can't be as stable as official android versions. Second reason - with Samsung I am confident that I will get 3-4 years of free software upgrades and 4-6 years of security updates, when you get Chinese phone you lucky if you get 1 year of support and then phone basically becomes obsolete because there are no updates. I guess some people don't care and change phone every year anyway - so it may not become a problem unless you keep your phone for longer time. Finally, more personal reason is that Chinese phones do spy on you... and yes - all phones spy you, but whereas apple, Google or Samsung spies on you for marketing purposes, Chinese government literally spies on you with intent of suppressing freedoms. This may sound paranoid, but for example we have noticed that our app shielding (which prevents hacking basically) often shuts off our app on certain Chinese phones, because they trying to spy on the app. I can't decide for other people and I am sure that if somebody is not planning to go to China to protest against Chinese government saving 50% of the cost on device with similar specifications may not be an issue.

As for MediaTek - again it is similar issue as with Android. Most (if not all) of modern phone CPUs are ARM designs - Qualcomm, Samsung and apple licenses architecture and makes CPUs to ARM spec. MediaTek uses ARM designs as well, but they often make custom designs specifically for Chinese market which may or may not be up-to spec. These then usually finds their way in entry level phones (under £200) and simply are not as stable. There are some high end MediaTek chips, which are quite good, but especially their entry level stuff is iffy. So when you combine low-end MediaTek + entry level phone + unlicensed android it is like asking for trouble.

Simply by process of elimination it is clear that it is something to do with the phone and not something to do with the system in the car.  I am not saying you have to change your phone because it doesn't work with Android-Auto, as I said you can try resetting phone and settings in car, but it is rather involved and annoying process and there is no guarantee it will start working. So you might end-up with choice of not using Android-Auto or having to change your phone anyway. 

[Linas.P]

57 minutes ago, DavidCM said:

Thank you Linas.I,ll try again to get through to someone intelligent at Motorola ...probably a lost cause..why do these large organisations make it so  difficult for customers to speak to someone who can help,rather than recite off a script?!

Good luck with that. If you have phone contract you my be better off speaking with your network provider, sometimes they have "technical helpdesk". Now sure they won't know how to use each specific device, but they usually have quite good general knowledge on settings - maybe there is something special that you can change on the device. 

[H3XME]

On 4/17/2022 at 8:13 PM, DavidCM said:

I have recently bought the above with the Mark Levinson system and all is working fine-very pleased.However I cannot get my phone (motorola edge 20 lite) to connect to Android Auto.It connects very briefly -for about 1 or 2 seconds then disconnects then constantly shuttles on and off.

Ihave tried the obvious things-different cables,re installing AA on the phone to no avail.My wifes Samsung phone easily establishes contact and holds it. Any Ideas anybody,please?

Did you try taking your car to the dealership? It is probably unlikely an issue with the car, but perhaps they came across this before and can help point you in the right direction.

[DavidCM]

When I collected the car from Lexus Guildford the salesman's Samsung connected ok(as does my wife's).I strongly suspect it is the Motorola--'Im waiting to hear back from them--like a lot of these large companies now ,they won't speak to you by phone!!! odd for a company that sells phones...same with Vodafone very difficult to by pass their "chatbot" system and when you do you get nowhere,slowly.