iPhone7 Bluetooth issue in the car

If anyone wants to watch a scintillating 2-minute video of audio stuttering from my iPhone 7 Plus (128GB, AT&T) and 2011 Prius, here is a video I just threw together: https://youtu.be/l1wzcCnqe_I

I drove around for 40 minutes and the audio stuttered at least 7 times.

I plan to show it to the Apple Genius, along with a few printouts of this thread. Will use it tomorrow to push for an unlocked phone replacement, as suggested above.

Not sure if that will make a difference. My Verizon 7 plus is unlocked. When I got it brand new I used it with AT&T sim temporarily.

Did someone suggest getting an unlocked phone solves the audio issue?

the verizon model is the same as the unlocked model

Has anyone else tried (who has this BT issue with their iPhone 7/7 Plus) to see if putting their Apple Watch in Airplane mode fixes the problem, as it did with mine? And by "fix" I mean "temporarily solves" the BT issue (as what good is having an Apple Watch if I have to put it in Airplane mode for it not to interfere with my iPhone 7 and my Mazda BT sound system).

What I am curious about is why this solves my BT issue in my car... initially I assumed this has everything to do with my iPhone 7 (which I still believe to be true) but I'm curious why airplane mode'ing my Apple Watch is "fixing" the issue in my car with stuttering of BT.

I have an AT&T Apple iPhone 7 and a 1st-gen Apple Watch running OS 3.

Jeff

Sorry DrGoldNerd, but that is not true. This has nothing to do with the speakers as my BT speakers in my car work fine with other devices which are not an iPhone 7 running iOS 10.

Hey Dlawn,

As you can see, hundreds (if not thousands) are having these issues with iPhone 7 and BT no longer working properly in their car systems/infotainment systems... not sure if you saw my "temporary solve" that worked for me... putting my Apple Watch in airplane mode (and only my Apple Watch, not my iPhone 7) has "solved" the issue for me.

If you don't have an Apple Watch, then try this:

Place your Apple iPhone 7 in airplane mode. Turn on BT. Make sure it's paired with your car. Does it still skip/unpair? Does it work?

What I can gather so far is there is something wrong with iPhone 7 and/or AT&T and/or Apple Watch's BT interfering with the iPhone 7's BT and your car's BT.

Hope that helps in the interim.

Jeff

I also have been able to solve this problem by turning off LTE on the iPhone 7+. My carrier is AT&T. It immediately stopped stuttering and, so far, automatically pairs when I get in the car which it had periodically not been doing, requiring a re-pair when I started the vehicle.

The phone downshifts to G4, but so far that has not been an issue, in the Seattle area.

I have a Subaru Outback, 2014.

My iPhone 7+ worked just fine for two weeks. It connected flawlessly to my S550. But today once it connects the SiriusXM sound disappears and the phone shows as off hook on the car screen. When I turned on airplane mode theSiriusXM came back on. When I turned off airplane mode the problem replicated. This problem started right after an iOS upgrade to 10.2.

Apple -please fix the iOS.

Thanks.

I tried your suggestion. Worked for a while. Then I opened safari to reply that it worked and it started stuttering again *sigh*. And my watch is still in airplane mode. I'm in a 2013 Jeep Wrangler. Same thing happens in my 2014 VW Jetta and with my son's Bose sound link speakers. My son has an iPhone 6S and his phone works fine with all the above Bluetooth speakers. We're both on iOS 10.1.1.

Hope Apple gets this fixed soon. Because, as you know, it's really annoying and frustrating.

Hey guys,

Over the past week during the holiday, I really had the chance to put 10.2 through the paces with this issue on my 128GB 7 Plus. I've done probably 7-10 hours of driving and I've only had bluetooth stuttering a handful of times while playing music. It's certainly NOT fixed and it is NOT perfect, but it is wildly improved over 10.1x. Just my $0.02..

My stuttering problem got worse with 10.2. Way worse. Ymmv.

Very interested in seeing how this went.

Exactly. After upgrading to 10.2, it became much worse! (iPhone 7+ with 2012 Infiniti FX35)

Met with Apple Genius earlier today and ultimately received a replacement iPhone 7 Plus.

My old phone was officially replaced due to a faulty GPS chip.

But before the tech erased and reset the device to check the GPS, I told him about the Bluetooth stuttering. I brought up my video and showed him 2 printed pages from the beginning of this thread.

He ignored the video, but read through the printout. He quickly -- and confidently -- stated that the issue was due to the iPhone 7 using a new Bluetooth chip and updated Bluetooth protocol. He said that most older car audio systems need to be updated to work with the newer Bluetooth.

I probably should have asked him whether the car audio systems needed a hardware upgrade (aka. replacement) or a software upgrade. And I probably should have grilled him on why Apple chose a chip and/or protocol that was incompatible with the majority (?) of cars on the road.

But it either didn't occur to me or I thought the questions wouldn't have been productive. It was also extremely crowded and noisy.

Anyway... when I asked him for an unlocked replacement, he confirmed that my old 7 Plus was in fact already unlocked (I originally paid for the device outright).

So after about 90 minutes of restoration, I connected my replacement unlocked, 128GB iPhone 7 Plus to my 2011 Prius and drove home. The first 15 minutes were glorious. No stutters or drops while streaming Apple Music.

Unfortunately in the last 5 minutes, I switched to the Reminders app to create a to-do and that's when the stuttering came back.

Thanks for the follow-up here. I guess now I need to find out the specification of the new BT chip/protocol and what the requirements are in order to be compatible with that. Then find out what the BT specification of my car. If those don't match, I'll have to find a feasible way to either downgrade the BT protocol of the phone or upgrade BT of the car.

If that is all true, I really want to hear from Apple how they justify the decision of making their BT protocol incompatible with many cars on the road, and more importantly all the pains this brings to its customers.