Android Auto is an alien facehugger on my SYNC 4 system

[Snakk Attakk]

My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S22 with mostly default settings and hardly any apps installed. I use the wireless (Bluetooth/WiFi connection) as well as a wired USB connection.

Here is my list of grievances:

- The touch panel becomes partially unresponsive. This is random and mainly affects the icons in the AA app drawer which can trap you from exiting to SYNC 4. A reset of SYNC 4 is necessary to recover.
- The wireless connection can drop harshly with a dialog box. You have to wait a bit and dick around with settings to get it connected again. This often occurs near busy intersections. USB does not have this issue (but it suffers from all the others).
- When AA is enabled, the SYNC 4 phone messaging app is replaced by the AA messaging app. The SYNC 4 version can read all my SMS messages and supports text to speech. The AA version only shows messages received during the current session (usually zero), and the text to speech function only produces silence.
- The AA touch panel integration is even more laggy than the SYNC 4 functionality (which is also laggy). The skip and volume buttons are horrific.
- AA defaults to popping up a split screen with GPS, and there is no apparent way to defeat this. I don't need to see GPS on my commute, and this works my phone harder.
- Amazon Music always has dropouts for the first few minutes after starting the vehicle. ALWAYS. It usually subsides but sometimes requires a reset of SYNC 4 to recover.
- Amazon Music is in a mode where it wants to play the same 5 shitty bands on My Soundtrack, sometimes the same band back-to-back. I had to thumbs down like five in a row after rating bands for years with my paid account (this is clearly an Amazon issue but still salt in the wound).

I received some sort of AA software update this week, and they fixed DICK.

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[cr117]

 

[Beach_Bum]

My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S22 with mostly default settings and hardly any apps installed. I use the wireless (Bluetooth/WiFi connection) as well as a wired USB connection.

Here is my list of grievances:

- The touch panel becomes partially unresponsive. This is random and mainly affects the icons in the AA app drawer which can trap you from exiting to SYNC 4. A reset of SYNC 4 is necessary to recover.
- The wireless connection can drop harshly with a dialog box. You have to wait a bit and dick around with settings to get it connected again. This often occurs near busy intersections. USB does not have this issue (but it suffers from all the others).
- When AA is enabled, the SYNC 4 phone messaging app is replaced by the AA messaging app. The SYNC 4 version can read all my SMS messages and supports text to speech. The AA version only shows messages received during the current session (usually zero), and the text to speech function only produces silence.
- The AA touch panel integration is even more laggy than the SYNC 4 functionality (which is also laggy). The skip and volume buttons are horrific.
- AA defaults to popping up a split screen with GPS, and there is no apparent way to defeat this. I don't need to see GPS on my commute, and this works my phone harder.
- Amazon Music always has dropouts for the first few minutes after starting the vehicle. ALWAYS. It usually subsides but sometimes requires a reset of SYNC 4 to recover.
- Amazon Music is in a mode where it wants to play the same 5 shitty bands on My Soundtrack, sometimes the same band back-to-back. I had to thumbs down like five in a row after rating bands for years with my paid account (this is clearly an Amazon issue but still salt in the wound).

I received some sort of AA software update this week, and they fixed DICK.

I laugh because it is all true.

 

[Squatch]

My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S22 with mostly default settings and hardly any apps installed. I use the wireless (Bluetooth/WiFi connection) as well as a wired USB connection.

Here is my list of grievances:

- The touch panel becomes partially unresponsive. This is random and mainly affects the icons in the AA app drawer which can trap you from exiting to SYNC 4. A reset of SYNC 4 is necessary to recover.

Sometimes shifting into reverse, which activates the camera, has fixed this for me but it may be a Ford-side issue.

- The wireless connection can drop harshly with a dialog box. You have to wait a bit and dick around with settings to get it connected again. This often occurs near busy intersections. USB does not have this issue (but it suffers from all the others).

This is often at the same geographic area where the 2.4GHz band is saturated and, in my experience, has some illegal signal boosting(but a billionaire can bribe the FCC I guess?)

- When AA is enabled, the SYNC 4 phone messaging app is replaced by the AA messaging app. The SYNC 4 version can read all my SMS messages and supports text to speech. The AA version only shows messages received during the current session (usually zero), and the text to speech function only produces silence.

That may be a setting on your phone. I had the same phone and it read my texts just fine until I turned off that permission.

- The AA touch panel integration is even more laggy than the SYNC 4 functionality (which is also laggy). The skip and volume buttons are horrific.

The steering wheel buttons work just fine. Any issues with that is app-dependent except for the 30-minute delay between changing the volume and it showing up on the display--all Ford.

- AA defaults to popping up a split screen with GPS, and there is no apparent way to defeat this. I don't need to see GPS on my commute, and this works my phone harder.

You can't switch it to the app you're using, full screen? AA requires your location on... gotta get that data.

- Amazon Music always has dropouts for the first few minutes after starting the vehicle. ALWAYS. It usually subsides but sometimes requires a reset of SYNC 4 to recover.

Amazon App problem. I get better results if I open the app on my phone within minutes BEFORE getting into the Bronco. I don't do anything other than open it.

- Amazon Music is in a mode where it wants to play the same 5 shitty bands on My Soundtrack, sometimes the same band back-to-back. I had to thumbs down like five in a row after rating bands for years with my paid account (this is clearly an Amazon issue but still salt in the wound).

Yeah, that's the Amazon Music app.

I received some sort of AA software update this week, and they fixed DICK.

I'm glad they fixed your...

 

[Snakk Attakk]

New SMS messages appear in AA, just old messages don't. I could be a permissions issue I guess, but I have no idea how to enable that. The silence during text to speech is some sort of bug.

 

[HighVelocity]

I received some sort of AA software update this week, and they fixed DICK.

I got an update recently too and the only thing I've noticed is that now when the wireless AA connection drops out, I can't reconnect it until I come to a stop 'for safety'. Before I could do it on the fly.

Sure, Ford, it's perfectly 'safe' for me to muck around with other functions while in motion, but reconnecting my AA when you're crap software drops it? Nooooo..that's WAY to dangerous.

 

[Strykerwsu]

8 inch screen? My 12 and galaxy 21 have never had any issues. However, the 8 inch on my short time withHeritage had a bunch of issues.

 

[GroovyGeek]

8 inch screen? My 12 and galaxy 21 have never had any issues. However, the 8 inch on my short time withHeritage had a bunch of issues.

I have a similar list of complaints about AA. Currently driving a F150 rental with an. 8 inch screen and it is the same clusterfuck.

A week or two ago I ran an informal survey here of AA issues. The conclusion was

1) Not related to phone. There were problems with pixels, galaxy s21, s22, s23, as well as people with the same phones who were perfectly happy.

2) Not related to wireless or wired.

3) Cleaning cache, reinstalling apps does not do shit

The only consistent thread was that the vast majority of people with poor experience are on 8 inch screens. And since now 8inch screens are history and Ford has done absolutely nothing in the past 3 years to improve the situation, I think it is fair to say that those of us with 8 inch screens are perma-fucked.

When I get my Bronco back at the end of the week I will move my wife's Carlinkit adapter to the Bronco and see how it does. It works very well on my wife's car. Will report here, if it works well I will just buy one for me and stop dealing with the incompetence.of the Ford firmware engineers.

 

[CrazyPete]

The AA has been so glitchy that I'm close to disabling it. This is the 1st vehicle ive had with wireless AA and it has been nothing but aggregating.

 

[BlueBronco]

My only complaint with the AA is that when connected wirelessly it drains my phones battery so I then have to plug it in which negates the entire wireless feature.

Thus I always run AA with a hardline connection on both my Sync4 and Sync3 equipped vehicles and don't experience any of OP's problems.

Well, except the old text reading. I have been a user of AA since it's inception and that was never an option. They probably chalk it up as a safety feature.

Oh, and the Amazon music bugs. But that's because Amazon music sucks and, literally, no one uses it.

 

[Snakk Attakk]

I got an update recently too and the only thing I've noticed is that now when the wireless AA connection drops out, I can't reconnect it until I come to a stop 'for safety'. Before I could do it on the fly.

This is not good news.

8 inch screen? My 12 and galaxy 21 have never had any issues. However, the 8 inch on my short time withHeritage had a bunch of issues.

Correct, 8" screen. Sadly, Ford has discontinued this size on all models for 2024. That means this variant won't get much attention during software maintenance moving forward. I could be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Snakk Attakk]

Oh, and the Amazon music bugs. But that's because Amazon music sucks and, literally, no one uses it.

I've had it for a few years, and it kicked ass up until recently. At one point it forgot ALL my ratings. Then they sort of came back but is still in that five band loop. I use the same app to Chromecast to my home theater receiver over WiFi, and the audio is rock solid.

 

[Snakk Attakk]

The AA has been so glitchy that I'm close to disabling it. This is the 1st vehicle ive had with wireless AA and it has been nothing but aggregating.

I do have it disabled at the SYNC 4 side currently. It's easy to re-enable, GPS appears to be the only functionality I need if Amazon Music doesn't straighten up.

 

[Snakk Attakk]

Oh, the "Play such and such" voice command to play music feature isn't integrated with Amazon Music, I get some snarky error about not having the right app. Really?

 

[Rydfree]

2023 with 12" screen and no issues here . The wireless AA is one of the things I enjoy best about the Bronco during my daily commutes. My 2020 Ranger had sync 3 and it was fine also , just wired and had to have a good quality cable for it to be reliable. I used a Samsung S20 in the Ranger and have the ZFlip5 in the Bronco.

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