Bluetooth issues on my iPhone 15 Pro Max with iOS 17.0.3

This is happening to me also. Have paired and unpaired my phone to my car’s Bluetooth several times. Sometimes it says paired but then doesn’t connect . Or connects for a few seconds then drops again. Very frustrating . This is new iPhone Pro Max. Less than 4 weeks old. Seemed to work for a week. Not sure if the update happened after that. This shouldn’t be happening. Running iOS 17.2.1. Phone costs too much for me to be not able to make a call over my phone or use GPS . Neither Maps or Google Maps work. Very frustrating.

Hi, I have a 10-year-old F30 BMW Diesel 3 series. No carplay just a straight phone connection. Bluetooth to my car from iPhone 15 pro worked fine until the last ios update a few days ago Previously my air pods would not connect - now they do - however, this new issue is driving me crazy I have an ios17 .3 What are apple doing with the bluetooth? Fix one issue and cause another.

iOS 17.3. Now. Re-paired car/phone: call was fine for all the duration of the call (over 10 minutes).

Then I got a call and the audio disconnected as usual from the car, the car showed a call ongoing but I had to fumble the phone to switch to speaker.

So, problem still present in iOS 17.3.

I just lost hopes.

What car do you have? This is exactly what happens on both of my 2011 BMWs.

The chip used in my bluetooth modules is based off of a standard bluetooth chip design known as “BlueCore 6”.

Seems to be a pretty widely used chip design, especially for older cars that were on the cutting edge with Bluetooth streaming. It’s entirely plausible that the issues on this forum can all be traced to the way the iPhone 15 Pro’s bluetooth chip interacts with this particular chip design. Which is still something Apple needs to fix as it’s a widely used design.

To all others - anyone experiencing issues with other kinds of audio devices, such as hearing aids, older bluetooth headsets, etc? Saw the post about AirPods a few posts back.

@HOODY, I have an AirPod Pro Gen 1, various Bluetooth speakers, and a couple of Levoit and Govee smart home products that require Bluetooth during setup...all have issues connecting or staying connected to my 15PM.

Interesting - and thank you so much for the detailed logging on your end.

I think I’ve been able to pinpoint the offending process(es) that are buggy on Apple’s end.

Could someone else go to Settings -> Privacy -> analytics and look for a log that starts with “stacks-day-month-year-time.ips”?

Below is what mine reads. I have logs happening at just around the same time as the iPhone drops the BT connection. Error 288 is a memory overflow bug and explains why toggling bluetooth on the iPhone seems to restore the connection.

0500","os_version":"iPhone OS 17.4 (21E5184i)","roots_installed":0,"incident_id":"6E9077DD-6EC5-426B-90DB-662ED72D0AA0"}
{
  "crashReporterKey" : "8cd1391e516f9b8213a03e048e9d54061f87db13",
  "exception" : "0xbd15dead",
  "frontmostPids" : [
    36
  ],
  "tuning" : {

  },
  "absoluteTime" : 30957492203,
  "product" : "iPhone16,1",
  "kernel" : "Darwin Kernel Version 23.4.0: Wed Jan 17 21:43:43 PST 2024; root:xnu-10063.100.610.0.2~73\/RELEASE_ARM64_T8122",
  "date" : "2024-01-25 18:03:38.06 -0500",
  "reason" : "BTAudioPlugin start condition timed out",
  "codeSigningMonitor" : 2,
  "incident" : "6E9077DD-6EC5-426B-90DB-662ED72D0AA0",
  "build" : "iPhone OS 17.4 (21E5184i)",
  "roots_installed" : 0,
  "bug_type" : "288",
  "memoryStatus" : {"compressorSize":57793,"compressions":440490,"decompressions":165719,"busyBufferCount":0,"memoryPressureDetails":{"pagesWanted":469,"pagesReclaimed":0},"pageSize":16384,"memoryPressure":false,"memoryPages":{"active":175567,"throttled":0,"fileBacked":173621,"wired":76958,"purgeable":26733,"inactive":161497,"free":1531,"speculative":14247}},

Just looked at my 14 Pro. No stackshot logs there, except for one relating to some Fitness data syncing.

So I think we’ve found the cause. There’s a memory overflow situation going on between the 15 Pro’s Bluetooth stack and Bluetooth devices. Related processes are:

addressbooksync

apple.pairedsync.appconduitd

pairedsync.nanophone

All 3 are pretty self-explanatory, I think. Address Book syncing, the process which probably negotiates device apps to work over Bluetooth, and the phone pairing process.

So there you go. If others with the same issue confirm the stackshot logs corresponding to when their Bluetooth drops out and with the same bug (288) flagged, we’ll have our answer.

I’ll share all of this with Apple Support so hopefully their devs can fix the code on their end.

It's quite concerning that after several months, there has been no public recognition of this issue from Apple. I'm located in the UK and would like to know how we can collectively address this. (My previous post just got removed, due to I mentioned "Lxgxl Axtixn")....wow seriously?

For context, my iPhone operates seamlessly with the Tune2Air in my 2012 AUDI Q5 (running iOS 17.2.1). However, the problem arises when I receive a phone call, at which point the connection to the car's Bluetooth is lost. It's been fine before with iOS 16 and my iPhone XS Max.

15 pro, peugeot 508, 2014

I have noticed when I make regular calls in car, 90% there no connection interruption. when i make calls on viber, WhatsApp or use google maps navigation, every time the phone disconnect from car play and I need to connect manually.

also when I use airpods 1-th gen, after 15-20 min, they disconnect from phone.

I have huawei smart watch 2 pro, sometimes also have issue with connection.

Previously I had iphone xr, worked PERFECTLY.

I’m a little disappointed in the way Apple (a) are not accepting there is an underlying issue with the phone hardware/software, and (b) the way they are instructing people to go and replace your car. This phone costs upwards of £1200, it’s simply not good enough being unable to use Bluetooth, what next… a phone that you can’t call certain numbers and advised to get new friends?!?!

I will sadly be leaving this conversation now, as my phone is going back to store for a full refund, I’ll think twice before even considering an Apple product going forward which is sad for someone who is so heavily invested in their ecosystem.

For those poor souls who don’t have the option of returning the product, I wish you luck in getting this sorted… hopefully Apple do the right thing and say “Houston we have a problem”!!

Come on Apple, this is not the right way to treat your customers.

Here’s the response from engineering: It’s a compatibility issue between the iPhone and the bluetooth system (checks out). Due to the “advanced testing techniques” not being available when the car was new (not sure what that means?). The advisor was unable to answer why my 14 Pro works fine, but my 15 Pro doesn’t, beyond it being some sport of cutoff in terms of time (?). I also asked my advisor to clarify Apple’s position - what is the age of cars they support? What bluetooth standards are supported? I pushed for a more technical response.

They had me call BMW again/reach out to them for logs / guidance. BMW confirmed there was nothing further they could provide, that all logs/diagnostics had been run, and that everything checks out. Emailed my advisor with a response, we shall see what they say. Have a call scheduled tomorrow.

Thank you for the update Hoody007.

I think we can agree that’s not a particularly helpful response from Engineering.

It’s not a BMW problem. Or VAG group. Or Dodge. Or Ford. Then there are the folks having AirPod, external speaker and toothbrush problem…

For me, they really have to engage with the concept that this is a backwards compatibility problem, which they might not haven’t tested for.

I’m trying to establish what the various Bluetooth/WiFi chipsets are across the various iPhone variants.

Does anyone else know?

There is an incomplete picture available online but I’ll keep searching. Worst comes to it, I’ll try and procure some pre-loved devices myself and do my own teardowns.

In iFixit’s teardown of the 15 Pro Max, they fhink it’s ‘probably’ apples own Bluetooth/Wifi module. I have my doubts about that given the announcement to make their own chips was only made in early 2023.

It’s not impossible that the Pro and Pro Max have different wifi/BT chips given they have the new 3nm A17 Pro processor.

Keep plugging at the engineers. I’ll start next week …

This is precisely it. My car is confirmed to use bluetooth 2.1, and bluetooth is backwards compatible. That’s how it should be, that’s what the standards say, and that’s what BMW has confirmed. I regrettably don’t have any other bluetooth devices to check, aside from my AirPods Pro (which use bluetooth 5), my Apple Watch (5.2), and my Ember mug (Bluetooth 4 LE).

The Pro/Pro Max do use a new wifi/bluetooth chip, it’s the only iPhone that uses 6E. To think of it, I haven’t tried turning off wifi on the phone. Maybe there’s some interference going on…

I’ve tried with wifi off but made no difference.

Following on from last nights discussion, I tried unpairing from the car, repairing BUT without synchronising the phone book and call lists. No change, disconnected and reconnected as usual.

Thats helpful to know the version of BT in your car. I suspect this will be same for all cars owners of that era.

The way I was able to concretely verify was by pairing my car to my Mac and looking in System Report - it tells you what software version the device is running.

I’ll stay in this topic for as long as possible, but time is quickly running out for me to return my 15 Pro - Wed of next week is my 14 days. I had hoped for a more encouraging response from Apple, so who knows, let’s see what they come back with tomorrow.