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Comment by byteknight | Hacker News Reader

You are either speaking hyperbolicly or lying. Bluetooth is very stable these days.

The Bluetooth experience varies wildly. The Bluetooth stack is pretty enormous and complicated these days, so there's a lot of space for software and hardware vendors to screw things up.

Apple-to-Apple seems to be dead reliable from everything I've heard. Samsung-to-Samsung seems almost as good. Apple or Android to random, Chinese car stereo might be a connectivity nightmare. Connecting to an OEM stereo with whatever implementation was poorly specified by the car company might also be a nightmare.

Yeah, my iPhone 13 hasn't worked reliably with the Bluetooth in my 2009 Prius for a year or longer. The Prius software is just too old, I think, and I'm not sure there's a way to upgrade.

i'd think the prius software being old and not upgradable would guarantee that it would work; apple can't have possibly tested their iphone 13 with the models tesla brings out next year, but a 2009 prius ought to be an extremely well characterized platform for their compatibility testing

Well, whether it should be or not, with the iPhone 13 my phone and car simply no longer communicate well. I experience failure to complete calls after repeated attempts, slow connections between phone and car, and other difficulties that I didn't experience with my iPhone 11. I don't have other Bluetooth related difficulties, only with the car.

i didn't mean to suggest that i doubted your veracity; i just think you're letting apple off too easy

I had a Prius of that vintage; and as I recall, the onboard infotainment system could be upgraded (both for software and navigation data, IIRC), but it was a something you had to take it into a dealer and pay several hundred dollars for, and there was no proactive notification when there were updates available or what they addressed. I doubt they are still rolling out new updates (but maybe), but even if not it may be possible (though possibly not useful for your problem) to still get whatever the last one was.

The problem with most automakers (good example, General Motors) and their electronics divisions (i.e ACDelco) is their centuries of experience with getting sued, so everything innovative gets reworked to satisfy the demands of the legal department, specifically as far as cars sold in the United States is concerned.

You must live in some alternate reality. Bluetooth is hardly stable for me.

There's a difference between being stable (robust once connected), and connecting aggressively.

We have two cars from the same manufacturer, each paired with two iPhones. Start either car or drive by, and the car will take over an existing Bluetooth connection from one of the iPhones. And by take over, I mean: disconnect an active connection streaming to Airpods/Beats/Airplay soundbars, and grab that stream of music/video/conference call into the car.

The driver in the car then has to pause playback or hang up on someone else's call, because there's no way to pass it back.

> You are either speaking hyperbolicly or lying. Bluetooth is very stable these days.

Bluetooth as a network protocol, that might be stable. Bluetooth interactivity is not stable or even usable in many cases.

It's not just in cars and other non-computer interfaces, good luck trying to pair a non-Apple device with an Apple device. If you say "it works on my computer", congrats, you're the only one. And also speaking hyperbolically.

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