[SOLVED] Phone goes haywire when plugged into car.

[micky]

I had to change phones, the new phone, an Xioami Redmi Note 8 Pro, does not work with the car, even though the Samsung A30 worked well.

As soon as I plug the phone into the car, a box at the bottom wants to know about file transfers, files only, photos, nothing, Cancel. "Nothing" is checked. Whether I tap it or not, the box disappears in a second or two and then reappears a couple seconds later, over and over and over, so much that the phone is afaict worthless when plugged into the car.

I tried to uninstall Android Auto (to reinstall it) but after I tap Uninstall twice, it offers me Update, not Install. That seems strange! Still I coudln't find Android Auto in the display of icons or any list. How do I know for sure it's not installed anymore?????

-----The problem seems to be that it is time to Update Android Auto, but when I tap on Update, the circle just spins around the logo and it says Pending for 10 or 20 minutes until I cancel it. When I do this fr om the playstore entry on the web, tthe same thing happens on the phone, of course.

When I went to Help for Android Auto it said to turn Development Options off (which sounds related since Dev Options is what you need to transfer files, iirc) and it took me to the right Settings page. I turned it off, but it didn't help. I restarted the phone. Didn't help. After that, tapping Android Help took me not to the original page that described way(s?) to make it work, but to a shortened page with no info.

This phone is 2 years old but little used, never dropped, and works well in most other ways, although when I try to use it as a hotspot, it doesn't connect as readily, and the icons in the systray (Globe when not connected, rectangle (image of wide screen monitor) when almost conected, and radiating quarter circles when fully connected) often stop at the rectangle. Sometimes they never appear and even though it's working it's always the image of the monitor! That never happened with Samsung.

Also, the home page and other icon pages of the Samsung had a search line at the top, to look for an app if I can't find it. This one has nothing like that. Is that an issue with the Launcher? If I change launchers is it hard to get the original mone back?

[micky]

So I emptied the Play Store app Cache and it ran for an hour, but remained Pending.

Another help page said to delete the data, not just the cache. I don't have any of the personal data in there that they warn you might delete, so I did it. Now the whole app is gone, at least the icon.

So I'll install it from the web, no problem, right?

When I go to the playstore and search for Google Play Services,

get 30 suggestions but none has the same icon as the one that is missing. You know, the triangle pointing right that is mostly blue with a yellow tip and green and red triangles for the top and bottom sides. You can see it in the left suggestion on the 3rd row, but only within the picture. The icon is much different and it's called Play Store Update.

So how do I get my play store icon back on my phone?

[micky]

SOLVED, at least partly.

The Play store icon showed up at the end of the last page of icons. I think maybe it was nothing I did that made it reappear, some automatic Android process maybe, since this icon is so important.

With it I was able to update Android Auto and tomorrow I'll know if that works.

And then I was able to move the icon from the last page to the first page, just by very long tapping, moving the icon to the left margin, and then the pages went by to t he right until the first page appeared and I could move it to the empty spot where it had been!!!!

So I guess delet>>

[micky]

Only partly. Android Auto is updated, but it doesn't work any better with the car. The phone keeps jumping around from the Android Auto welcome page, which says what you need to do next (or maybe that's a second stop on its jumping around), to the "Do you want to transfer files" box, to the previous unrelated phone screen, and then it starts all over, except the transfer files box appears at different times with two different choices highlighted.

One of the things it wanted was to bluetooth** pair the phone and the car. This was automatic with the Samsung, but I unplugged the phone from the car and tried it. I couldn't find the car in the list of available bluetooth. But even if the sound is not paired, that's no reason to jump around

**It uses bluetooth for phone conversations and the cable for other things.

So I thought, I'll uninstall Android Auto and at least I can charge my phone while driving. But it still won't uninstall. After I say Uninstall and confirm, it finishes and shows Update. Not Install. And when it shows update, it still jumps around and the phone is unusable when plugged in.

Any ideas what to do next?

[AJL]

My phone has no option to uninstall Android Auto, only to disable it. Do you have a disable button perhaps? If so it may accomplish what you want.

In the past when my phone does things I can't fix I have finally resorted to the drastic measure of a factory reset. It has always worked for ME likely because it was likely ME that screwed things up in the first place.

A recent example is this W10 laptop I'm posting with. I tried the earphones for the first time in months and they wouldn't work and I couldn't figure out how to fix them. After some hours I resorted to a factory reset. Fixed them. Obviously something I messed with had caused the problem. It was a PITA to reinstall everything but then I've got lots of time and the earphones sound great... ;)

[micky]

I don't think I've seen that. I'll look for it if the current plan doesn't work.

Yes, that would be a PITA and a pity. I'd have to do some prep first

But I kept googling and found the official Android Auto forum, which you can get to from the link I gave in the other post,

And I'm not the only one with this problem. It can be caused by an inadequate cable. Bear in mind the cable worked fine with the previous phone.

So I took every other cable I had, 3 of them including 1 from a drawer of the guy whose room I'm renting. And tried all of them.

With one it said something like "Short circuit, Turn off car". I didn't and the message went away in 2 seconds. (Got the same message once today, so maybe it wasn't the cable.)

Each cable made it do different things!!! The best one was the one I borrowed from my room, but I already knew it has a broken connector, so sometimes it worked and a few seconds later it didn't and a few seconds later, it did. I tried to position it on the passenger seat so the cord didn't move but still, every bump in the road was enough to change things.

Today I went to 4 gas stations. 3 different chains. They all sold usb-A to C cables, but all sold the same brand, and only the one they thought would please everyone. It was 2 meters long, on the theory a long one works if you need a short one, but a short one doesn't work if you need a long one.

The cable-help page

"[FAQ] Tips for choosing a compatible USB cable for using Android Auto If Android Auto has stopped working in your compatible car: Try replacing your USB cable - that fixes the issue in most cases!" said to use a cable no more than one meter**, plus I didn't want something longer. No one sits in the back seat. **OOPS, I misread that. It says no more than 6 feet. Oh well, there is always tomorrow.

Today I found a phone store and bought a new cable, 1 meter long, although something tells me it's the same brand I bought years ago that I've been using this whole trip, that doesn't work with the new phone. On the way back to my room it worked a little, but then the phone said it was overheating and it was going to limit what it did. So I still don't know. I'm busy now, writing you, but tonight or tomorrow I'll see if it works.

[micky]

I wasn't able to pair the phone with the car, but today I called my voice mail and even though iirc the phone was not plugged into the car, the phone call came through the cars speakers. The car's microphone might have worked too, but it was voicemail. And by this time, the car was in the phone's list of possible bluetooth connnections.

With almost all instances of AA, only phonecalls go by bluetooth. AA has a fully wireless version iiuc but not with most cars or not in most places, or something. Plus when plugged in, it charges the phone.

Of course at home my car is a 2005 and I'm lucky it has a map. No AA at home, so the cable I bought will have no use either. Only going to be here for 5 more days. 4 months is too long. No more trips longer than

3 months and the next one will be 2 months or less.

***** I checked the VIN for this car and it's 2021 Citroen. So it seems like they bought it in the middle of Corona, on the expectation that tourists would return again. Is that because it's Hertz and not some local yokels? 4 problems:

Every little thing dims the map. When someone cuts in front of me and it senses the car is too close, it dims the map and distracts me from looking at the road, when I need to look at the road the most. Instead I look at the moving object which is the radio screen. When I change the volume on the radio, it dims the map. I know I'm changing the volume, you don't have to make a big production out of it, or overlay the top 10% (instead of 20%) with the volume indicator, but don't dim the map. When I turn the wipers to one setting, it announces that they are on Eco or Auto, and it dims the map. When I turn that off, it dims the map. And several other things dim the map. I need the map, I want the map. The best thing about the car is the map. NEVER dim the map. Some programmer thought he was being clever, adding a feature, but he really made things worse.

Stop and Start has to be set OFF each time I start the car. In a hilly area I think it's a safety issue. The car has rolled back an inch or two once or twice and that means it can roll back more and hit the guy behind me at a red light on a hill.

Can't read the odometer in the daytime, even though the brightness is set to maximum.

It idles too fast, and when I take my foot off the brake it lurches forward or backwards. Hard to park in tight places; hard to avoid hitting something. Maybe this could be adjusted and Hertz hasn't adjusted it properly, but I think it's the maker.

[John McGaw]

The Law of Conservation of Misery is a folk wisdom that states that the total amount of misery in a system is constant. This implies that when you try to decrease the misery in one aspect of a system, you will increase the misery in some of the other aspects.

The interpretation of Law of the Conservation of Misery as given by "Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers" on NPR was "If you have a French car at least nothing worse is likely to happen to you."

[Rod Speed]

That's the problem, all frog cars are f***ed by design. Avoid like the plague.

Yep. Fucked by design like all frog cars. Rent a kraut car.

[Carlos E. R.]

BT correct pairing is a requirement for AA to work.

I solved my problem with AA by buying new phone, by the way.

Bug.

Probably there is an update, but rental hasn't taken the car to service.

Just keep your foot on the brake, all the time the light is red. Or use the hand brake. Neutral, and left foot on the floor, not the clutch. Thus allow the motor to stop, and be happy.

Assuming it is standard, not automatic gear box, you are not pushing the clutch to the full end.

[micky]

LOL I may just have to go back to my old phone. I forget the immediate reason I changed, something about webradio, but the other reason I changed was, I barely use it at home but here I use it heavily. I wanted to see how the newer phone worked when I used it heavily, and indeed, I learned things. It has advantages and disadvantages over the other one.

I hadn't thought of that. I'll tell them when I return the car on Thursday.

Don't worry. Be happy.

[micky]

It's an automatic. Barely any more expensive than standard these days.

[micky]

I shouldn't have said connector. It was the cable at the connector.

And then it didn't and 80% of the time it didn't.

It is the same brand, and not only that, it has the month and year printed on one connector. That's classy, right? Should mean it's a good cable, right? And the new one is 23 months newer. 2020\12 instead of 2019\01. But it doesn't work either. (I had asked him if he had a better one, but this was the only one he had: BASELINE original Type-C Data cable. Improved charge and transfer performance.)

Yeah, today is tomorrow and it doesn't work any better.

So today I went to a 5th gas station, 4th brand, and he had the same merchandise too. Actually his store was a little bigger and he even had a wirelss charger and some other stuff, but his USB-A to C cable was the same, and I bought it. 2 meters.

So many fancy words, I can't tell what brand it is, but I think it's ARTOS LUXURY Metal Charge Quick Charge and Sync. Cost between 12 and

13 dollars. Other one cost almost $10. but I thought the price was higher at the gas station because it was a gas station and not a store dedicated to the product. ????? Also it's twice as long so of course it's more money. But it's better too.

I should have taken my own advice and bought it yesterday. What I'd said was that gas stations only stock one model, one that will please everyone, and that's why it's longer that most, and I think it's good quality. FWIW, it has some sort of woven cover, outermost layer is not vinyl.

I'll tell you this, the connector is better. I had to work to unplug it from the phone.

So that webpage at the top of this post was right. It was the cable. isn't that strange?

And if my earlier phone worked with an inferior cable, but this phone won't, doesn't that mean that even with a better cable, the setup is marginal, and it will take less to make it fail??

[David Higton]

And if my earlier phone worked with an inferior cable, but this phone

> won't, doesn't that mean that even with a better cable, the setup is > marginal, and it will take less to make it fail??

Only time and experience will tell.

David

[micky]

Sage words.

[Clare Snyder]

It's a Citroen - It's French. It will NEVER make sense. Ad Google to the mix???? No thanks. Then throw Mikey into the mix, and you have a cross between a shakespeare comedy and a tragedy!!!! Mikey, stay with technology older than 2000 and you will (likely) be just fine!!!

[micky]

Well, it didn't take much time. Though everything worked fine for 3 hours the first day, the next day the connection came and went, every 5 to 15 seconds. At least it now alternated between no connection and a connection with map and internet audio (instead of still trying to set up Android auto and geting nothing)

So I drove for 2 hours, mostly with the radio playing local radio. Later, I took the phone off the magnetic AC-vent mount and it worked fine again. Why is that?

But later it started to alternate again. I really did need the map then but it was on more than half the time and in practice that was enough

Friday I expect to be back in the USA and my car won't work with Android Auto anyhow, so I don't know when the next time will be that this will matter.