iPhone Xs Bluetooth audio quality

Thank you Hygh Priest.

This is a good work around until they can fix the issue. Makes it bare-able to listen to music again.

This should be marked as the solution to the problem as it is a very good work around. :) You have made my day!

Turning off wifi does not work and should not be noted as the solution!

Turning off wifi works, but you have to deactivate the personal hotspot too! - The hotspot label in the control center must be 'off' - not 'invisible'. Sometimes, you have to deactivate the hotspot several times to completely shut it down! Apple should bring the ability to deactivate the hotspot via siri shortcuts!

I have been frustrated myself about all of this audio issues. I have found however that the temporally solution of turning off the Wi-Fi works but is something that I would not expect to do all times.

Another aspects that I just founded out: I live in Brazil and my iPhone X is from US. I have other iPhone that I brought from US that have the same issue but if I use a iPhone built or offered in Brazil there is no audio frequency shift whatsoever. So maybe one of the issues would be related to the frequency set ups each country have vs the ones configured or embedded to each iPhone.

With that said, could any one else confirm if the problem still exists even if you have a "local" iPhone? Meaning, is the Bluetooth audio issue still persists even if the car audio and iPhone were designed for the same World area location?

Hello from Germany.

Same Problem here with my iPhone SE and iOS 12.1.3 .

I am pretty annoyed about that, because I wanted to play music in the car without any cables and installed a bluetooth receiver (Grom Audio BT3) in my car. And now I have this ugly noise instead of music.

I also hear that it is because of bad bandwidth. If there is only one instrument playing, it gets all the bitrate and sounds kind of nice. But if voices and other instruments added to it, the bandwidth isn't enough anymore and the noise starts.

I also tried that workaround with disabling wifi. Switched it off in settings and also reconnected to the bluetooth receiver - didn't work for me.

I wonder, what could cause the problem, because bluetooth is not a new invention. There was a time when things were just working. Now there has to be every year a new software and everything needs to be different. The worst for me is - you are kind of forced to the new OS, because it is downloading and then annoying until you finally install it. Way back to old OS? not passible. What a pain.

Small solution..

I tried everything now in the settings, I could find. There is an option in Music settings, that controls the volume. In german it is „Lautstärkeanpassung“. I enabled it and it sounds at least not like torture anymore. It is still not an hq sound.

The option seems to be called „Sound Check“ in englisch. Under EQ and Volume Limit.

Hope that helps..

Cheers,

Steffen

Hello together,

same issue here since months with my 2016 BMW. I‘ve called Apple several times, but with all the Updates the last months there was no improvement.

It only occurs with mit iPhone 8, I got a SE as well, working without any issues.

Maybe Apple should solve this issue, After having the Wifi workaround every Morning when leaving Home, which is some kind of annoying. Every $100 Android based phone is working better with that.

So Apple, please fix this annoying issue!

So even if this problem only occurs with bmw, Apple was the one who rolled out an update (on iOS12) wich produced this failure. So I think it's on Apple to make sure that an update is working fine before rolling it out.

I have contacted BMW US and Germany and gave me a support number, it's been a month so far. BMW indicated that the issue can be found in iPhones and car design and built to different locations. I bought my iPhone in US and my BMW is set to Brazil standards.

It‘s definitely no BMW issue, the Wifi workaround works Fine and Even before the Update on iOS 12 it worked fine.

After having the first call with Apple and went to BMW afterwards, updating the System and testing it. There aren‘t any faults with the BMW System.

As I said, there is no issue with my SE. It only occurs with my iPhone 8, switching the Wifi off in Settings solves it, but it‘s no solution at all switching the wifi off when leaving home and entering the car everytime.

I had a couple of iPhones from different generations, Never had any issues but having this since the iOS 12 Update is a real joke.

There are several discussions about this issue in Spotify communities and others, so it‘s Time for solving this issue.

not true. It IS happening with MANY different cars. I started have many Bluetooth issues in my Lexus a few months back. Now my daughter has Dane issues with her Mercedes. It’s most definitely an apple issue.

Well so we can Point out that it‘s neither car related nor due to country specific configurations.

Furthermore it isn‘t one specific iPhone model which is affected.

I‘m really asking myself, whether Apple is Even Reading in its own support section 🤔

Feb 2019 and the problem persists. Since it does not seem to affect every car or speaker I assume it‘s a combination of iPhone (x/xs/8) and some bluetooth chpisets (which are used by many different car / speaker manufacturers). Someone would need to find out which chipset is used in the affected car models..

Other possibility would be that actually many more devices are affected but you just dont hear the quality drop on cheaper speakers. I have the Harman Kardon system in my 3 Series BMW and it’s just impossible to listen to music over BT with the quality going back and forth.

It still has to be something Apple has broken since the Problem did not exist up to iOS 11 and in older iPhones.

So this is interesting. I hopped into my old 2010 Acura TSX. It needs a new caliper and has kinda been sitting for a year. So I started it up and thought hey I should see if it has the same issue as my 2017 Civic. And low and behold the fidelity never changes. Highs stay crisp all the time. However the actual Bluetooth connection is not very stable. No idea why but at least while it’s playing it sounds perfect. Also that dropping issue is usually only in the first 5 minutes or so. I forgot how good the tech stereo sounds in the old Acura. I gotta get this caliper taken care of ASAP.

When I connect my iphone 6s plus to a Bluetooth speaker, either to play music or talk on the phone in my car, I have this annoying issue with the sound quality. The music sound quality can get better after some seconds of disruption when I play Spotify on my Bose Bluetooth speaker but the sound quality of my car’s speaker when I’m talking on the phone is constantly noisy and is never good! This has nothing to do with my phone reception. Any suggestions?

Unfortunately this issue has affected thousands of users since we discovered the issue, days after the iOS 12 release.. But so far no results.. We are currently at iOS 12.1.4 and still persists

Just to clarify a summary of the issue as far as we know it:

- The problem does not seem to be an application issue

- The recurring explanation is what sounds like a lowering of bitrate in the music(bad quality, loss of top and bottom frequencies(Hence, the suggestions to turn of EQ will not resolve only make it harder to notice))

- The problem occurs when the wifi-unit is searching for networks, not when connected to a network -> explains why most of the complaints is by travelling( cars, headsets etc)

- it does only affect a specific set of makes and models

- Multiple users have gotten diagnostics by apple, and the more the merrier

- This issue is also open in several app forums (ref spotify: https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Bad-Bluetooth-sound-quality-iOS-12/td-p/4572223)

- Quantity of complaints is still vital for apple to put more resources into solving this