Apple CarPlay problem with 2019 Acura RDX and iPhone X

I fiinally fixed the Apple CarPlay issues my wife was having with her 2019 Acura RDX and her iPhone 8. After following all the ideas on this page, my nearly identical phone worked, and hers did not.

I went into the phone profiles in the car’s CarPlay settings, and there were two profiles for her phone. I deleted them (along with all unneeded profiles created by the dealer test drives, etc.) and her phone works flawlessly.

I also recommend naming your phone something other than the default “iPhone” in the general settings.

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.

Found this on the web from an older post, might help?

"Have you followed all the steps here to ensure your iPhone X is set up properly to work with CarPlay? There may be a setting toggled on your wife's iPhone 7 that isn't turned on for your iPhone X. For example, be sure that Siri is turned on in Settings > Siri & Search. Also check out the "Get Help" section at the bottom of the article:

Set up CarPlay with your iPhone - Apple Support"

Also give the Acura / Honda Dealer a call, they might be of some help as well.

This solution was posted on the Acurazine users forum and several owners of the 2019 RDX, including me, have had success getting CarPlay to work using it:

”I was plagued with random carplay disconnects on my commute. On my hour commute, it was typical for my iphone to lose connection to carplay 2-3 times. The 3 finger reboot was only a temporary solution. What worked for me was performing a factory data reset. Settings->System->Factory Data Reset. It was a pain setting up all my radio and sirius presets all over again, but it's been over 2 weeks and I haven't had a single disconnect since.”

Hope it works for you.

I just got off the phone with Acura.

They are now acknowledging the problem and have admitted, the system is "overwhelmed" by Apple Car Play and can't handle it. They say the "fix" is imminent and will be released, prior to the end of the summer. Once it's released (assuming it works), they will then discussion "compensation".

One other little quirk they told me about, I'm not sure I believe: The system is not just sensitive to Apple Play. I haven't used Apply Play in 2 weeks and the system still froze up on me twice, on Sunday. Acura is recommending not using Apple Play and performing a "hard reset", to clear out any previous Apple Play information in the system (which is what they're claiming caused my system to freeze).. I'm not sure I buy that story, but that's what I was told.

Over the last 2 weeks, my RDX has simply "shut off" 4 times, while driving down the road. I doubt that's related too the Infotainment system, but it's pretty odd and more than a little disconcerting.

Why do people not take the time to read the thread?

There are no serious or significant glitches, with the updated Acura Infotainment system.

I run it it at least 10 hours a day, with my iPhone 8. I have run it for a couple of days, with an iPhone X.

As I've said numerous times. If your system doesn't work:

1. Clear out all the previous information (delete any profiles from the system).
2. Get an APPLE or Apple approved USB cord.
3. Do a "hard reset" of your phone.
4. Do a "hard reset" of the system.
5. Re-connect your iPhone.

Your ApplePlay will work. Perhaps perfeclyt, but 95% ... which is all I expect from my iPhone, when it's not connected to anything.

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.

I did a factory reset of all the infotainment settings and it hasn’t disconnected since. Been about 3 months. I am having intermittent charging issues with that port though still.

I can't speak to the iPhone X, but I can tell you that my iPhone 8, running the latest Beta, is fairly solid. I've had 1 or 2 drop outs in the last 24 hours. Each time I checked the USB cable, and it was partially out of the connector.

If I were still having problems, I would:

Delete my phone from the infotainment system. Delete the Bluetooth connection from the phone. Do a hard reset of the phone and a hard reset of the infotainment center ... then start everything from scratch.

I'm just speculating a bit here, but I bet that would fix the majority of issues. As I've said, I'm about 95% there with my phone connection. A couple of infrequent hiccups, but nothing unmanageable.

The latest update from Acura, as well as running iOS 13.2.2 seemed to improve reliability of the infotainment system, as well as Apple CarPlay. However, like many others, I still do get the audio dropouts while playing music in CarPlay. Sometimes it reconnects, sometimes it doesn’t.

So when it doesn’t, all of you please determine if your iPhone is still charging. If not, then the USB port is no longer providing power or connectivity. The only way to rectify this is to pull over and turn off engine. Wait several seconds, then either turn on accessories or restart engine. Then power and connectivity is restored and CarPlay works again. This behavior tells me there’s a system design issue that a Acura needs to fix of the iPhone doesn’t get power or connectivity from the USB port.

et al, please share if any of you are also seeing this behavior.

So we just met with the Acura Field Technical Specialist (one of 16 in the country) and he said that there is a brand new “infotainment control unit” that fixes the problem. He ordered the part and it will be installed tomorrow. Now the odd thing is that he said this new part is the same as what they’re using in the 2020 RDXs and someone just mentioned they’re having the same issue. Anyway, I’ll report back as soon as we test it. Crossing my fingers!!

ps - keep bugging Acura! I do believe they want to fix this and want their customers to be happy. Unfortunately it takes a lot of pressure to get there.

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.