Hi, I have a strange problem with the multimedia system of my Toyota Prius Advanced Plugin. I pair my Fairphone 6 (with /e/OS 3.7.1) via Bluetooth with the car (successfully), and then tapping on the musical notes icon on the car’s main screen will offer me to play back the audio files of my phone.
All the files and their folders are present. All files are alright and play perfectly on the phone. So far so good.
But when playing on the car, no matter which file I choose (happens with literally each and every one of the many hundred) the file will play - but after one minute and a couple of seconds (between 4 and 10) playback abruptly stops, switching to a seemingly non-existing file, the display shows “Not provided” (and of course no artist or album info).
Sometimes tapping on the playback button will repeat that file from the beginning, but only for a little more than a minute, again.
I am at a loss. On the internet I found a text that claimed this could be cured by disabling “media audio” in the settings of the Bluetooth coupling on the phone. But that does not work. When I do that, the car will not show me any file at all and consequently play nothing at all.
What could be the culprit of this strange behaviour?
What continent are you on? Also have you tried starting the content form the phone, not the car? What happens in that case?
In my old 2015 NA ford I que up music in Newpipe and hit play (from the phone over Bluetooth) before I drive. If I stop and get out of car/come back it just starts automatically. On the odd occasion a call or signal call comes in. I can then use the car interface (touch screen to restart the source (Newpipe).
Are you using stored music from the phone? If so start it from the phone first, see if it makes a difference?
This is Europe, Germany. I seem to have found a solution at least to the abrupt stopping problem, looks like it is some form of power saving that was enabled, but I did not take notes which I had disabled before it worked. I think it was music app of /e/OS, but I’m not sure.
Another that yet has no solution is that I can’t play albums from the car, only the first title get’s played, after that the system won’t go automatically to the next. That problem seems to be gone when I start an album on the phone. But I find that rather cumbersome…
And: When I navigate using the “Genre” option, after selecting a genre I get a listing of the albums of that genre, but each entry will simply start another title (!) from the current album, which is rather confusing. Especially when the current album was from another genre…
And yes, almost all of my music is in MP3s which I generated myself from CDs I have purchased (I am old fashioned, I know). I do not use Spotify often, especially not after my grace period ended and Spotify a) play ads and b) won’t allow me to play the songs I like anymore ?!
when I look at the phone’s display when a song is played, even when it got started from the car, I see the media player of /e/OS running in a frame that says “CAR MULTIMEDIA”. Looks like this is some partial implementation of Android Auto?
That could explain why the bass is so extremely overemphasized, which is necessary for the FP6, but counterintuitive for the car with its powerful PA and speakers…
Android Auto does not appear in my apps list and there is no icon for it, but when I look for Android Auto in the App Lounge, the Lounge tells me it is installed, although I do not recall installing it myself. And Lounge offers an update, which the search for updates did not reveal?
with v3.7.3 on husky (pixel 8 pro) i’ve similar issue directly at beginning of the track.
by taping playback, it begins again and play the whole track to its end, and stop by the next with the same issue and gain & again.
This happens with the standard eos music app.
Did’t try it with an other one…
Which app do you use on the phone for it?
Did you try an other one?
Just to know if it depends on the used app…
Don’t know how we could exclude eos or the car feature about this issue…
I’ve observed a kind bluetooth issue one time that by giving a call. the sound where oriented nowhere. both the phone and the car told each side connected. but the phone call-feature app of the car told not connected.
really strange.
I suspect the bluetooth interface of eos something buggy
The standard from /e/OS, Music. On my old FP2 with Fairphone Open OS (FPOOS, also an AOSP) I used Vanilla Music, but most of its features are in Music as well.
The problem with abruptly terminating playback has been solved. It is due to some strange (to say the least!) side effect of the power saving settings. Apparently /e/OS thinks it is a good idea to terminate a running Bluetooth sesstion to conserve some energy. While that is in theory correct, it ever so slightly not what the user expects at this point… Turning off the energy saving stopped this problem.
But I won’t close this topic, because another is still very active, and that is INTERMITTENT playback problems.
During a 1/4 h ride with my Toyota Prius (5th and current generation of 2023, built 2025, up-to-date SW/FW) I have more than half a dozen interruptions of playback. All of a sudden playback stops, but commences where it went off, after a few seconds (0.5 - 7).
VERY annoying.
My /e/ on the FP6 is up-to-date (4.0 - but I cannot change the headline of this bug report?)
I also opened a warranty case with Toyota, but my dealer/workshop did some checks on the BT antennae, which changed the nature of the problem a tiny little bit. Before, the interruptions sometimes (!) came during or shortly after road bumps. That got eliminated, now the interruptions come independent from road bumps. And last longer The frequency and number of their occurrence is just as bad as before.
When I connect my FP6 to my BT headset(s), I have far better range compared to what I get when I connect them to my HP notebook. About twice as long, so I guess BT field of strength is not the culprit.
The problem persists, now with /e/ 4.1.1. It has slightly shifted it’s nature (occurs a little less frequently, but when it occurs, it lasts longer. Up to 5 seconds no music
The issue could (!) have been solved. I keep fingers crossed. It’s too early to call it a solution, but this alleviated the problem significantly: There is a feature of Bluetooth I wasn’t even aware of: Offloading audio communication. What this means is that if enabled, the CPU no longer transfers audio data, something else does (possibly DMA controller or similar). Microsoft (!) claims energy conservation, which coudl be plausible.
As I understand it this is a feature that an app can request from the OS, because I find the setting to enable/disable this not in the Bluetooth settings, but in the settings of the Music app of /e/OS (btw. it is org.lineageos.twelve).
Go to the settings menu of the Music app, there is a slider “activate offloading” which by default is ON. Turn if off. The text says this might increase your energy consumption a little, but might help if you experience playback problems…
I have also tried another candidate which could have provoked disturbances in audio transfer, but that sits in the WiFI settings: It is not in plain sight, you have to search for it:
Open the general settings dialog of /e/OS, search for “WiFi” (or on my installation, because I use German localization, “WLAN” and then, and only then, will you see something like “WiFi search” (WLAN-Suche). If activated, apps are allowed to search for WiFi bases even if WiFi is turned off altogether.
In Germany, thanks to our regulating body (Bundesnetzagentur) WiFi and Bluetooth have exactly identical frequencies so they have to disturb each other. WiFi search is used as an alternative (or improvement) to GPS localization by Android, which -to me- makes no sense.
But: This was not the root cause for the problem. With this disabled I think the problem was aleviated, but not eliminated. With offloading disabled -so far!- the problem did not re-occur.
I think it is a Bluetooth compatibility issue between the Prius head unit and /e/OS rather than a problem with the audio files themselves. As the same files play normally on the phone and disabling Media Audio makes the car unable to see them, first check the AVRCP/media browsing implementation. If possible, try changing the Bluetooth AVRCP version in Developer Options, then forget and re pair the phone. Also test with another Bluetooth audio app or a different phone to see whether the Prius behaves normally. If another phone works fine, that would point pretty strongly toward an /e/OS/Fairphone Bluetooth stack issue rather than the car or files.
I can now, after a full weekend without any interruptions in the music say this: The culprit is the offloading feature of Android. Disabling that does indeed solve this problem!
I repeat the money quote: “Go to the settings menu of the Music app, there is a slider “activate offloading” which by default is ON. Turn if off.”.
But to be sure nothing else get’s in the way of a steady undisturbed streaming of audio data, I will also turn off “WiFi Search”. In Germany WiFi and BT use the exact same frequencies, thanks to our regulating body, so these two must disturb each other. As GPS is precise enough, I see no merit in WiFi search.
The frequency and number of their occurrence is just as bad as before.
so they have to disturb each other. WiFi search is used as an alternative (or improvement) to GPS localization by Android, which -to me- makes no sense.