iPhone 6, iOS 9.2, Ford Sync (1st Gen) and Pebble Time

[gordol]

Last week, I got a Pebble Time smartwatch to connect to my iPhone 6 (iOS 9.2). The Time app on my phone is v3.5, which is current. The watch connects to the phone via two BT connections, one normal and one Low Energy.

Since installing the Pebble app, ~90% of the time (certainly more often than not) when starting the car it will start to connect to my phone via BT and then fail, reverting to Line In. It has never done this prior to installing the Pebble app on my phone. Sometimes it just works. Connecting a headset just works (multiple headsets, not at the same time).

The Pebble app needs to remain running in the background for the watch to communicate with the phone.

If I then tell the car, either via voice command or the menuing system, to switch to BT, it will reconnect successfully.

(The iMore forum for Pebble appears dead, last post in there was October and remains unanswered.)

 

[anon(9208252)]

I believe there is an upgrade to the ford sync out, this might help.

 

[gordol]

No, there isn't. Ford stopped supporting 1st gen Sync three years ago.

 

[anon(9208252)]

Oh sorry.

 

[Not Quite Right]

Ford stopped supporting 1st gen Sync three years ago.

Most likely your answer right there ...

 

[gordol]

Most likely your answer right there ...

The car should not care. The car should not even know the Pebble is connected to the phone.

On my way in to work this morning, I did an experiment. I left the watch connected via bluetooth to the phone, but killed the iPhone Pebble app, then started the car. And the car connected to the phone without issue The fail point here is the Pebble app, not the car.

 

[Not Quite Right]

If I then tell the car, either via voice command or the menuing system, to switch to BT, it will reconnect successfully.

I was referring to maybe the car not being Bluetooth multi-point capable, or the lack of updates not enabling that functionality. Ford Sync is a notorious POS, and none of this is surprising ...

 

[gordol]

I was referring to maybe the car not being Bluetooth multi-point capable, or the lack of updates not enabling that functionality. Ford Sync is a notorious POS, and none of this is surprising ...

Well, this 1st gen Sync certainly sucks, I have no experience with the newer versions. But whatever its faults is, multi-point BT is not the issue on the car side. The only device the car is connecting to is the iPhone. Maybe the iPhone is having multi-point issues? USB would be a good alternative, except that the car can't actually handle it - it'll start to work, then fail with an error that indexing the phone times out. It's done that since the day I bought the car two and a half years ago.

Nor should this otherwise be a feature-related issue on the car side, as it was working as well with iOS 9.2 prior to the addition of the Pebble as it was with 9.1, 9.0, 8.x, etc. Except that the car is the only BT audio device I've been using that does this. I have since noticed that my Plantronics stereo headset will periodically have micro-breaks while listening to something for a period of time, and today that lost the connection to my phone, and would not restore it until I rebooted the phone (did not try just toggling BT off/on) after using it for about 5 hours.