Apple CarPlay problem with 2019 Acura RDX and iPhone X

I did the factory data reset about a week ago, have had several short drives and a longer drive today, about an hour. No drops at all! So very happy. Except that from what others have said it looks like we'll have to do the factory data reset process whenever Apple or Acura does a software update. Which means the driver memory settings will be lost each time, and my spouse will give me dirty looks for a few days until they can get their seat and mirror settings back the way they like them. Not sure which is worse, CarPlay disconnects or grumpy spouse.

OK, mine was rock solid until the Acura update that added Andriod auto support and around the same time iOS 13 on my iPhone X and iPhone 7. Both iPhones have exactly the same issue on the Acura of regular disconnects and I rent a lot of cars and have never once had an issue with CarPlay on any other vehicle, just the RDX. As I say everything was faultless from the showroom until the update (though my wife's Android works perfectly on Android Auto and never drops).

Couple of tips I have to get the phone reconnected faster than the several minutes here... once a disconnect hits, quickly yank out the USB cable, do the Acura 3 button hold to get the system to test mode. Just run any diagnostic... if you're really keen, run the diagnostic for the infotainment unit, that forces a restart on it. But kicking anything off seems to work. Exit the diagnostics, ensure the phone is unlocked and then reconnect. 9/10 times this gets the connectivity back quicker than waiting. Subsequent disconnects also tend to be less severe too. And as other advice here, deactivate the iPhone Wifi and Bluetooth too (in the main settings, not the quick panel).

Hate the Acura disconnects. Dangerous and only a matter of time before someone is killed by the distraction.

Ok, so I purchased my 2019 RDX in June of 2018. CarPlay worked well (though there were still little buggy things like audio pops here and there) until the 2nd OTA update that happened in February 2019. Since then it's been a crap-shoot whether or not CarPlay would stay connected. My work commute is between 40-55 minutes each way. Before the more recent OTA updates CarPlay would disconnect within the 5 minute mark, then reconnect around 5-10 minutes after that. But for the past several months if CarPlay disconnects it would not reconnect for at least an hour (if I happened to be driving that long) forcing me to go to bluetooth for audio. The 3 button reboot does nothing for the issue (literally rebooted the system 5-6 times on my drive home one time and just kept disconnecting. One other observation is that when CarPlay disconnects within the 5 minute mark, my phone still charges thru the cable from the USB. If I disconnect the cable from the USB then replug it in, I do not get any power from the port (also official apple cable thing is complete ********. I use Anker cables which are great. Disconnects happen no matter what the cable is so the whole "use an official Apple cable is complete nonsense)

Anywho, yesterday I saw the post about doing the Factory Data Reset which is found withing the infotainment's "Settings" menus. I tried this when I went out for lunch. After it reset the data options I added back in my phone to Bluetooth and moved some icons around and adjusted bass/treble settings to my liking. I noticed the Android Auto icon was present so this data reset seems to keep the OTA updates in place since that feature came from a very recent OTA update. Then plugged the phone in (iPhone XS Max) and drove back to work. The trip around 6-7 minutes had no disconnects. My trip to work from home that night had no disconnects. And this morning I needed to go in to work - no disconnects. I also waited for the infotainment system to fully boot up before plugging in my phone.

So far this method seems promising, but I'm not fully holding my breath.

One possible thing that comes to mind as to why this may be helping the situation is the data reset is perhaps reorganizing how the data including the OTA updates are being read by the system? This is going to sound weird and off topic slightly but I have the game Skyrim for Xbox and the game allows you to download Mods, however many of the mods request that you order them in your mod list in a very specific way, indicating to either place the mod near the top or the bottom of the list because of the way the system reads the data. If not done the right way there is a risk of the game crashing. I have no clue if this is the same type of thing that's going on with the RDX infotainment system and it's just a wild guess of mine, but I can't help but wonder if the Factory Data Reset helps re-organize the data present within the system. I'll be keeping an eye on things and report back if the disconnect issue comes back.

Stay strong fellow RDX owners!

DEK Apple wrote:

The caching explanation makes sense to me and would explain why many of us did not start having the CarPlay disconnect problem till after we had the car for a number of months. We bought our cars at different times but eventually we started experiencing the problem.

If this is what is going on I suppose you could do full system reset several times a year.

It sure would be nice if Acura would get that portion of the Infotainment software rewritten to fix the problem, but given Acura’s long history of denial about the problem it seems unlikely they will do that. They just do not seem to care about their customers. I have called them many times about this, but it is hard to get them to admit this is a real issue despite all the evidence to the contrary.

A full system reset is not a big deal and well within what I would consider normal operation of a system like this. The issue is that Apple has built such a robust set of OS's that it has raised expectations in this industry to a level higher than most of it is capable of achieving with a reasonable outlay of cost. You think Acura is going to release OS updates for the car every couple of months? No way. Not cost effective. They license these OS's for years at a significant amount of money. The two exceptions to all of this is BMW and Tesla. They built their system from the ground up and it is very good with a higher frequency of updates, patches and fixes than anyone else is doing.

Just reset it, don't throw money at it and have reasonable expectations.

So update to my update. My brilliant husband spoke to a family mechanic who works for a different dealership and suggested replacing the audio fuse. He did as such and I am back in business with my Bluetooth and Car Play working once more. How long this fix will last- I don’t know but until then, I will keep a good thought for people who can’t catch a break with the issues with their cars.

I was able to test just the USB port, according to the February 6th suggestion of Leo666, and the USB Music connection did die, as he thought it would, a few minutes into my drive.

So, Leo666 may be on to something here. The problem may be in the USB port, which of course you must connect to in order to use CarPlay.

To save you all time looking for Leo666's post, he suggested disconnecting CarPlay and Bluetooth (on both the Acura and the iPhone) and then select the USB Music feature from the infotainment menu.

I noticed I wasn’t experiencing this issue when connecting my work phone (iPhone XR) to Apple CarPlay, but constantly experienced it with my personal phone (iPhone XS). Both are updated with the latest iOS update. The difference, I have the Acuralink app installed on my personal phone, the phone that kept disconnecting every couple minutes. I deleted Acuralink since I wasn’t subscribed to it anyways. After deleting the app, my personal phone did not disconnect on my 1 hour commute into work. That’s a first. I’ll need more time to test out this theory. Hopefully this works. Has anyone else tried deleting the Acuralink app, and has it resolved the CarPlay issues?

I'd recently taken my RDX into the dealership. They claimed they reset the infotainment system. However, I noticed that all of my radio stations were still programed. So, I followed the instructions to reset it. After the reset, I waited for everything to boot completely. Then I plugged in a genuine Apple USB cable, and my iPhone X. Things worked, and have remained stable. I'm sure I'll have to try it again once Acura / Apple roll out updates. But I'm cautiously optimistic with this.

Best of luck everyone.

After months of trying different things with no success, I also did the complete Factory Data Reset on the infotainment system over the weekend. I didn't lose the OTA software update that came out in November, but all settings and other data were wiped.

Amazingly for the first time since October it has actually been stable with no dropouts for about three days with several trips and three 30 minute commutes. I am cautiously optimistic. You would think that if this was all that was needed to fix the issue (which is a big safety issue), they would post a technical bulletin or article for dealers and owners.

Are others having success with this?

Frustrated_Acura_Carplay wrote:

After nearly a year of struggling with my 2020 RDX and Iphone XS Max with repeated carplay disconnects reconnects and disconnects, trying new cables, updating the InfoTainment system, resetting my phone. I finally solved the problem. I bought an Android Phone. It has been working seamlessly for over a week and Android Auto actually seems to be a better interface, where google maps leverages my HUD with turn by turn directions. I am still transitioning from an Iphone to an Android, but the carplay issues are gone.

It's a bummer that an Acura issue made you compromise your general security like this. The reason people are seeing success after Entertainment System Resets is an issue with the partitions within the Entertainment storage. A lot of caching goes on locally with maps and cover-art with no real system of cleanup. This cache dynamically expands until ALL of the storage is taken. There is no mechanism in place to dynamically shrink, a major oversight by Acura (or Alpine who actually makes those systems for Acura). So, Basically: Resetting is formatting and putting all the partitions at a size they should be.

When you plug in your iPhone it loads CarPlay FROM the iPhone, CarPlay does not exist in the infotainment system.... it is loaded from the iPhone every time you start CarPlay. CarPlay needs minimal space to run with minor caching. If the infotainment system is bloated then it cannot effectively cache and will not work correctly.

This is purely an Acura issue, you will run into this with your Android phone as it caches 3-4 times the amount of data. Which means you'll run into this issue 3-4 times as fast.

Hey There- I was the one who wrote about the fuse. My screen was stuck in the disclaimer screen and would not turn off even when the car was off. I called Acura- useless. Then contacted my brother in law who is a mechanic with another dealership. Long story short He advised my husband to swap out the #37 15A audio fuse. My husband did this and an hour later I was back up and running. You can find the exact location of the fuse in the manual. I have not had any issues with Car play since. But still this is the last Acura I am leasing. Love the car but not the headaches associated with audio. Good luck all. Hope this helps

Andy7269 wrote:

Hey There- I was the one who wrote about the fuse. My screen was stuck in the disclaimer screen and would not turn off even when the car was off. I called Acura- useless. Then contacted my brother in law who is a mechanic with another dealership. Long story short He advised my husband to swap out the #37 15A audio fuse. My husband did this and an hour later I was back up and running. You can find the exact location of the fuse in the manual. I have not had any issues with Car play since. But still this is the last Acura I am leasing. Love the car but not the headaches associated with audio. Good luck all. Hope this helps

Same as a factory reset.

That is not at all the case. I have a 2019 TLX and CarPlay works PERFECT. I spoke to the Acura Field Technician at length about the issue and he told me that it is 100% an issue with the vendor that makes the infotainment system for the 2019 and 2020 RDX. None of their other vehicles have the issue. It is a defect that Acura knows about and they are solely responsible for resolving it. Whether that means buying the car back or replacing the system with one from another vendor. Talk to a different lawyer. The first lawyer I spoke to told me similar info that yours told you. I think there are some shady lawyers out there (despite popular belief) 😂 that only take the cases that fit into certain criteria. You paid a lot of money for that car. Hold them responsible for not delivering the features you paid for.

I am not sure any overload is necessary. I think the USB (not Apple CarPlay) drops, could be an overload, or a defect in some USBs. This is why I want you guys to do this test.

Please, turn Bluetooth Off. Disable Apple CarPlay. Use the music with USB, not Bluetooth, and let’s see if it will drop.

I was able to catch this glitch in Video. But I want to see if same happens with you guys.

Next test, is positive with you guys as well, is to make same happen with an Android Phone, USB audio with an android, and same glitch, where USB becomes unavailable for 5 minutes after dropping. This will prove that problem is unrelated with Apple, and it is an Acura issue. I can’t believe their engineers never test that on the defective cars.

I think it is a broader USB interface problem, not just CarPlay. I did the following steps:

Disabled bluetooth on iPhone.

Disabled CarPlay by forgetting vehicles on iPhone and deleting device in settings on RDX system.

I then went into the USB Audio input on RDX and plugged in the iPhone to play music. Nothing happened. I unplugged and tried again, but still no recognition that a device was plugged in and on the iPhone it didn't even show that it was charging. It was as if the USB port was dead. It then occurred to me that the car had been running for about 10 minutes and maybe it was already cycling so I left it plugged in and on USB Audio. In a few minutes it suddenly recognized it had a USB device plugged in, and the system asked me if I wanted to enable CarPlay and I left it disabled. Then music started playing. I let it play via USB and five minutes later it stopped. Interestingly the phone still showed that it was charging, so the USB port wasn't totally dead. Basically it was the exact same behavior as the CarPlay drops I've been having for months, but I wasn't using CarPlay at all.

I definitely think the issue is not related to CarPlay, it has something to do with the USB hardware, USB controller firmware, or USB interface driver in the OS on the RDX. It would be interesting to do the same test with an Android phone playing music via USB. It may not happen with a smaller device like an old iPod or USB stick as they draw less power and might not cause the same issue as a phone trying to charge.

It's incredibly frustrating that Acura engineers aren't doing what we're doing. It has nothing to do with the phone, my phone works reliably on lots of other vehicles I've tried it on when renting cars.