Bluetooth Interference - Apple Watch and iPhone 6

...me too - I have three Bluetooth connections in total when sitting in my car. Two go to the Car Entertainment System (Kenwood DNX4280BT) for phone and audio streaming, another one serves the Apple Watch. I'm on iOS 9.1, by the way. And I have clearly identified the Apple Watch BT connection as the one that's interfering with the other two. Mostly, I have a very rough phone connection and bad audio streaming, both with interruptions, crackling etc. then.

The workaround that I momentarily use before entering my car is to switch Flight Mode on and then again off on my iPhone which leaves the Watch in Flight mode so that the Watch's BT connection stays temporarily disabled. After a little while, when the phone and audio streaming BT connections are safely established, I switch the Watch's Flight Mode off and let it establish its BT connection to the iPhone. Then, everything works fine, but obviously it's really a hassle to go through this procedure every time I enter my car, especially when just stopping for some gas or similar.

It seems to be some sort of "timing" problem. Like I said, after the phone and audio connections are established, I can enable the Watch's BT connection safely but not vice versa.

Hope this will be fixed anytime soon, but somehow I have little hope for that...

G.

I'm having this issue too, with a Plantronics bluetooth headset. Audio cuts out or signal is lost all together when using it with my iPhone or Mac while Apple Watch is nearby. I have never had issues with it in the past and the audio comes back when I turn off the apple watch OR switch to the internal speaker on my phone/mac. I called applecare and they are having an engineer look into the case. Will post an update when I hear back. Would encourage others to do the same if you're having bluetooth issues so Apple looks into it.

I use an apple watch, and an iPhone 6 plus with my new 2015 Honda Fit. Bluetooth audio between the iPhone and the car worked perfectly, until I purchased an apple watch. Now the audio signal between my phone and my car breaks up at random intervals. It continues to work, but the audio will occasionally be disrupted by static. When I turn the watch off, the problem goes away..

Bluetooth has a limited bandwidth available to it. Think of it as a narrow field Wi-Fi router, if it's just you connected to the internet it's fast, but if 20 other people decided to sign onto your router and started surfing, streaming and downloading, your download speed would suffer because the bandwidth is being stretched across too many demands.

Depending on how your devices are set up, there could be too much data being split over a limited bandwidth by too many activities (streaming music to one device, while airdropping images, while health activity is being synced to your iPhone from Watch etc. Streaming music will take up the biggest chunk of the bandwidth available, if a notification comes in that would momentarily interrupt the music stream.

Try each bluetooth device activity individually, then try adding a second, third etc. to find out where the limits of the bandwidth kick in.

I had this same issues when I upgraded to the iPhone X. Put the Apple Watch in airplane mode call is fine out of airplane mode call is crackly. Called Apple they had me reset my network settings and that solved the issue for me. Hope this helps if any one else runs into the issue.

I too am experiencing a problem in which my mouse will not connect (or remain connected) to my Macbook Air when the Apple Watch is active. Putting the watch into Airplane mode immediately makes the mouse workable. I have not had any issues with my iPhone 6, watch and bluetooth in my car. These have worked flawlessly.

Further report. After looking around and finding many with this interference issue and their car sound systems bluetooth connections I found the only "solution" or work around as many have said is to have the watch on airplane mode when I am in car and wanting to use my Mazda 6 Connect system (phone calls or music).

Without doing the connections went flaky:

1) music played from phone with constant dropping of audio every 10-15 seconds, the mazda connect would not increment the time status of a tune anylong just stuck and when new tune was moved to (the music was playing and updating on my watch screen ok -- but audio was thru the car and it was badly intermittent.

2) the connection issues had my playlist updating wonky also and even when normally synced after 10 seconds of car starting it was taking minutes. After that the flakyness of play was noted.

3) the bad connections/interference also reset my clock to UTM time somewhere 6 hours earlier and it was hard for me to find the time to go back in my Mazda connect settings (after all it is Microsoft software LOL)

so for now I just go to airplane mode on watch and the basic function work fine just some of the interent stuff no but do not need when I am runing car anyway.

I'm also having interference issues with my Apple Watch and my Powerbeats 2 Wireless. I realized the Apple Watch was causing the interference through my own findings before finding this thread.

iPhone 6 Plus + Powerbeats 2 Wireless = Good

Apple Watch + Powerbeats 2 Wireless = Good

iPhone 6 Plus + Watch + Powerbeats 2 Wireless = Lots of interference. Music cuts out frequently.

I submitted feedback for the Apple Watch through the feedback link which was provided to me by customer support via chat: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

I hope there is an update that fixes this issue soon. 🙂

I've been in touch with applecare about my bluetooth issues (causing interference with my Plantronics Legend headset and Jaybird Bluebuds X headphones). They forwarded my case to the product engineering team who said they will investigate and release a bluetooth patch as part of the next apple watch software update. So keep your eyes out for an update which hopefully will fix this!

They told me it could be about a month before the 1.0.3 release.

All depends on the version of software and hardware in your particular model of BMW (same for other auto manufacturers)-- for which there are hundreds of possibilities. And the same goes for the thousands of BT products. BT has standards and it's likely that either Apple pushed beyond them

somewhere with the Apple Watch -- or they have a significant code bug. Just google bluetooth issues and ios 8 to discover the legions of people who've had BT problems since ios 8.2 (the version which added the Apple Watch). Consumers often don't realize what is causing their connectivity problems, so it doesn't surprise me in the least that people are reporting issues in a variety of seemingly disconnected areas. And given all of the reports of problems with other auto manufacturer's BT systems and the countless third party BT hardware products (mice, keyboards, headphones, etc) it's likely that each product manufacturer is getting many reports about their products -- thereby escaping Apple's purview.

Apple deifnitely has a big problem with this, and since ios 8.2 they haven't addresssed it. I was hoping ios 9 might solve it, but I can't find out because I had to scrap ios 9 after the latest update because as countless beta testers learned it instantly disabled LTE and vis voicemail on T-Mobile/MetroPCS phones.

I experienced quite a similar behaviour as dino_russ. Moreover, I found that when I had completely restored my iPhone via iTunes, everything worked as intended and I didn't have to switch my Apple Watch to flight mode, no BT interferences then - but only for a few days/weeks. At some point, the trouble started over again with more and more Watch interferences coming up, audio streaming became jerky again, phone calls were messed up soundwise. I somehow have the impression that this is some sort of a weird memory leak. But then again, it doesn't really help to simply reboot the iPhone, that only helps for a couple of hours - if at all.

So I again have no choice as to put my Apple Watch into flight mode before entering my car. That's the only working method to avoid those BT interferences, at least for the time being.

Also, I noted that contacts syncing between my iPhone and my car entertainment system (Kenwood DNX4280BT, by the way) took a lot longer with the Watch enabled compared to when I put the Watch in flight mode before. Seems to be the same reason.

Best

gerofromronnenberg wrote:

I experienced quite a similar behaviour as dino_russ. Moreover, I found that when I had completely restored my iPhone via iTunes, everything worked as intended and I didn't have to switch my Apple Watch to flight mode, no BT interferences then - but only for a few days/weeks. At some point, the trouble started over again with more and more Watch interferences coming up, audio streaming became jerky again, phone calls were messed up soundwise. I somehow have the impression that this is some sort of a weird memory leak. But then again, it doesn't really help to simply reboot the iPhone, that only helps for a couple of hours - if at all.

So I again have no choice as to put my Apple Watch into flight mode before entering my car. That's the only working method to avoid those BT interferences, at least for the time being.

Also, I noted that contacts syncing between my iPhone and my car entertainment system (Kenwood DNX4280BT, by the way) took a lot longer with the Watch enabled compared to when I put the Watch in flight mode before. Seems to be the same reason.

Best

Yes you have described my symptoms exactly. The other day when symptoms came back after a week or two without needing to go airplane mode while starting the loading of contacts and syncing of the phone part not only slowed down like they do with the watch interference as you note but they failed and then it would not sync even with watch in airplane. It forced me to completely unpair the iPhone from the car, and do a new pairing before they would again load. I am not sure what the bluetooth issues with the watch are but it is more than annoying. The habit is simple to do but occasionally I am in hurry and forget. so it needs to be fixed apple. I have done feedback to apple on this..

I realised that the quality of the music in the car using Spotify from my phone started to be bad.

Actually there was continuos interference and sound scratches like having a bad connection, similar to playing music on a bad vinyl album.

That happened since I had my brand new apple watch.

By turning off the watch the problem disappears, and comes back when I turn it on.

These are my devices and car:

- iPhone 5s with 9.3.1 sw version

- Apple watch with 2.2 sw version

- Ford C-MAX

I realise there is no solution so far, apart from setting the watch to airplane mode ... Did I understand properly ?

Thanks

Regards

I posted this on the Apple Watch Hardware board as well:
There seems to be conflicts with the Apple Watch, iPhone6 Bluetooth and car connectivity. The iPhone is the hub that Bluetooth goes through for both the watch and the car, the watch itself is not pairing to the car. I have an iPhone 6 Plus that has no problem connecting to my Toyota RAV4 EV audio and phone system via Bluetooth. I recently paired an Apple Watch to the phone, and all was well until the next time I got into my car. The automobile Bluetooth would no longer automatically pair with the phone, and when I forced a connection, the result was that my watch would no longer receive calls. I left it alone, and a few days later I realized that my watch had ceased other operations as well: it would no longer charge with the provided dock, and sending taps, heartbeats and on-watch texts immediately failed. Ultimately, I had to remove the car Bluetooth connection from my iPhone and reset the watch to "out of the box" settings before it became functional again. At this point I cannot connect the iPhone to the car via Bluetooth without impacting the watch. Apple Watch devs: software fix, please!

Update, I finally made an appointment at the Apple Store. We reset the watch to factory and unpaired all devices. We then added the watch back and then added the bluetooth devices afterwards. This seemed to fix it for about a week. Had the issue pop up again so I went back. This time it was suggested that I perform a restore on the phone. This is a very labor intensive process as you guys know, but I am at my wits end. Will report back.