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iOS 9.1 Bluetooth buzzing audio iPhone 6s

I have discovered a bug in iOS 9.1, tested on 2 iPhone 6's, and one 6s.


1. Connect your iPhone 6 or 6s to a bluetooth that has the ability to power off ungracefully. This means you can power the bluetooth device off and the phone does not recognize that the bluetooth device is off immediately (the bluetooth icon on your phone remains lit for about 10 seconds before turning gray)

2. While connected, power off the bluetooth device

3. Do anything that causes the phone to play audio. What I generally do is lock and unlock the phone several times (this causes the locking "click" to come out of the bluetooth speaker generally)

4. After the bluetooth turns off, the audio is corrupted. Playing almost any audio will result in a constant buzzing or silence (depending on what the first sound of the audio is). Phone call ring tones are a constant buzz. Some audio sounds are OK, but generally any video or music will cause this to fail.


Only solution to fix I have found is to reboot the phone.


I took my brand new 6s to the genius bar, they suggested to re-set up the phone as a new device. After clearing all data from the phone, with the above technique I was able to get the device to exhibit the same behavior, so it is not my software. On my previous iPhone 6, I had the same issue (but didn't know about the trigger), and I just tried my brother's iPhone 6, and could get the same thing to happen. I've repeated the behavior for multiple bluetooth audio devices.


Has anyone seen this issue? Can you repeat the steps above and get it to happen?


How to report this to Apple so they can fix it? This should be a very repeatable problem. Should I make another genius bar appointment to demonstrate the issue? Obviously, it's not my phone, so I can't get a new one that fixes the problem.


Message was edited by: schveiguy2

iPhone 6s, iOS 9.1, null

Posted on Dec 1, 2015 7:18 AM

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19 replies

Dec 2, 2015 9:08 AM in response to schveiguy2

I've been seeing the exact same behavior. Suspected it had something to do with Bluetooth as I recently started using a cheap bluetooth receiver in my car for audio, but I hadn't nailed down the sequence to get into the bad state yet. Reboot is the only thing that fixes it for me too.


I reported this via the feedback link.

Dec 2, 2015 11:39 AM in response to schveiguy2

I can't test them until after work in a few hours. I will do it then and report back. But the pattern you describe and the resulting behavior certainly seems to match what I've been experiencing. The bluetooth receiver powers off when I shut the car off, and I'm usually still streaming music at that point. Then I go into my house and try to stream music via AirPlay and get the buzzing noises. Interestingly though, not all sounds are necessarily affected. It seems generally to be music apps that have the problem (Music, TuneIn, Live365).

Dec 11, 2015 6:53 AM in response to schveiguy2

Sorry, I haven't been able to reproduce the problem using your steps. And in fact I haven't seen the problem since I reported it here, despite having seen it multiple times prior to that. I'll keep trying, though the steps are pretty simple, and for sure turning off the car causes power to stop to my bluetooth receiver, which the phone doesn't recognize immediately. I've tried both leaving music playing, and the lock unlock steps you outlined without success.


Upgraded to 9.2 yesterday.

Dec 14, 2015 8:08 PM in response to schveiguy2

Thank you for posting this. I've scoured the Internet looking for someone else with this problem. This is the only post I've found. Anyway, I am experiencing the same awful bug on my 6s Plus. In fact, I went to the Genius Bar too. They had never heard this before so assumed it was hardware and gave me a new phone. A few days later, it happened again. I could not figure out the sequence of events to trigger the buzz (I'll try your sequence tomorrow and confirm). Today it happened three times. Gah!!! I was hoping that 9.2 would fix this, but no luck...

Dec 22, 2015 7:35 AM in response to schveiguy2

Now that I've found what triggers the problem (thanks!), my solution is fairly simple. And so far so good! No buzz for about a week. Here is what I do:

  1. Before I turn off my car (2013 Kia Soul)...
  2. Pause audio on iPhone (6s Plus)
  3. Sleep iPhone (not power down, just sleep the display with the Sleep/Wake button on the right side of phone)
  4. Turn off car
  5. Make sure I do not play audio again until the iPhone registers that Bluetooth is not connected anymore (Bluetooth icon is grayed out)... usually about 5 seconds. In fact, I try not to wake the display until I'm sure the iPhone registers that Bluetooth has been disconnected... but this is likely unnecessary.

To be honest, step 3 (sleep iPhone) might be unnecessary as well. The most critical thing to remember here is that no audio should be playing while Bluetooth is disconnecting. I have not found it necessary to toggle Bluetooth on and off as schveiguy2 mentions above.

Dec 29, 2015 7:15 AM in response to Sammy Grumbles

Hi Sammy,


I find turning bluetooth off and on faster/easier. All you need to do is swipe up for the control center, tap the bluetooth icon, turn off the car, then tap the icon again. It's also more reliable as you know bluetooth is going to turn off immediately, no need to wait. It's second nature now.


Thanks for the further confirmation. After I filed the bug with the developer reporting tool, their bluetooth team asked for detailed log files, so I'm hoping they will fix this by the next release.

Jan 19, 2016 9:28 AM in response to schveiguy2

Schveiguy2—you are my HERO! I also went to the genius bar with this same problem and they ran all their tests and could find no problem with my iPhone 6+'s hardware. They replaced my phone and suggested I do a new install rather than loading everything from a backup. Well, I tried both and the problem persisted. I've just managed to reproduce the problem using the steps you described. I sure hope this is fixed in the next upgrade as this happens CONSTANTLY in my car, apparently, because of the way it connects to bluetooth. Thank you very much for this post and for helping shed light on this problem. At least I now know what is causing it and how to avoid that annoying buzz!!


I've also reported this as a bug through the link: http://www.apple.com/feedback. Let's hope someone takes notice and takes care of this in the next iOS update.

iOS 9.1 Bluetooth buzzing audio iPhone 6s

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