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Has anyone found a bluetooth carplay adapter that actually survives? (self.apple_enthusiast)

submitted 5 months ago by benfell to c/apple_enthusiast

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I have the misfortune of being stuck doing DoorDash. It means I'm constantly plugging in and unplugging my phone from my car, at least once at the beginning and and again at the end of each and every delivery. Even with USB-C (it's an iPhone 15 Pro Max), that makes me nervous. It's also inefficient, having to fumble with the cord and the plug and the phone each and every time. And of course it's a problem when it's pouring down rain and the USB outlet gets wet.

So I've been trying bluetooth adapters for my 2021 Toyota RAV4 XLE Premium Hybrid. I've gone through three of them, now. They each worked great for the first day or so, then died. A message appears on the screen that the device could not be started in "advanced mode" and "normal mode" means the device doesn't work.

The dealer informs me that the head units which support CarPlay over bluetooth are only available in model years 2023 and newer and cannot be retrofitted to a 2021.

I'm not even seeing the problem acknowledge in a web search. But for me, it's consistent.

Does anyone know a solution?

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[–] benfell 1 points 4 months ago

It's been a few weeks now and I think I understand the problem better. It's not solved.

First, it appears to really be that they mean it when they say to disconnect all connections when connecting the phone to the adapter. In my case, this is impractical: I have a smart watch, a smart ring, and smart glasses, and I have them for reasons. And I am frequently stopping and restarting the engine, which of course restarts the adapter (and I wondered if the power cycling was inducing premature failure).

What I'm seeing now is that the problem is occasional and unpredictable. This misled me as to the source of the problem. I thought it was the adapter. But it turns out that if I just wait five minutes, the longest five minutes ever, after getting the message, the adapter will try again to connect to the phone and probably succeed.

It happens I wound up renting a 2022 Jeep Compass for a couple of weeks. The head unit in this car, though clearly not top of the line, was capable of CarPlay over bluetooth. This seemed more robust, more reliable, but not entirely so. I don't have any idea how to account for this difference. Glitches still happened.

What I notice is that whether it's the head unit or an adapter, wifi is unavailable while connected. I infer that this connection uses both bluetooth and wifi and that part of what the initialization process involves is handshaking to establish both connections. I suspect that it's the wifi that's problematic, but I often start my car at home, where there are multiple wifi signals, including more than one that my phone knows about, without incident. So it's not just that my phone is already connected to wifi. There's more to it but I don't know what.

In the long term, I'll probably give in and upgrade the head unit. The display on the Jeep Compass was much improved over the one in my (one year older) RAV4. I noticed it was much easier to navigate with this display and that's important. But the mounting bracket that should (and probably does) work with my car has not been confirmed to fit. So it seems I have to wait.