Android Auto suddenly stopped working and no longer starts

17248 Views 13 Replies 5 Participants Last post by FlexoRodriguez, Dec 8, 2019

MechaBouncer

Discussion Starter · Mar 15, 2018

So I've had Android Auto running for a bit over a year now. I have AA 1.08 installed on my 2015 Mazda3 with firmware 59.00.441A-NA. Just yesterday I upgraded my Sony Xperia X Compact from Android 7.1.1 to Android 8.0.0. I had to reboot the phone and CMU in order to get it to connect the first time, but then it worked normally heading home from work and then again heading to work this morning. Then all of a sudden it has completely stopped working at all.

I've tried rebooting both the phone and the CMU several times. The CMU never seems to get a signal to start AA. Even if I manually start AA from the CMU, it just sits there with a blank window never doing anything. I've tried starting the headunit server from the AA Developer options on the phone, enabling and disabling USB debugging, clearing USB debugging credentials, and clearing the list of authorized cars in AA. None of it seems to make a difference.

I did just update the Google app, but when I try to uninstall the latest updates, AA fails to launch on the phone and then downloads the latest Google app anyway. That's the only other thing I can think of because it worked fine after the Android 8.0.0 update.

Has anyone else started having problems like this recently?

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· #5 · Mar 20, 2018 (Edited)

Yep, same cell phone (Xperia X Compact), same problem. I'm pretty sure it's the upgrade to 8.0 that did it as I was using AA 3.x with 7.1.1 and it worked fine.

It worked a few times right after update and I managed to get it to work maybe another two times since then, pretty much randomly (plug in, start the car, and suddenly it works even though the previous ten times it would not). I've tried clearing app data/cache, enabling/disabling USB debugging, etc, but without success.

There is a massive thread on Google product forums about AA connectivity problems after updating to Android 8.0 on Nexus devices (here) but it's hard to say if it's the same problem. For many people in that thread enabling USB debugging helps but for others (me included) it does not. If this is the problem that we're having then Google apparently fixed it in Android 8.1 but of course we only have 8.0 and who knows if Sony will release an 8.1 update for these two year old phones. Maybe they will backport the fix if we're lucky? I just installed the March security update (34.4.A.2.32) so I'll check tomorrow when I'm in the car but I'm not holding my breath...

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· #7 · Mar 25, 2018

Yeah, for me too when it doesn't work, the Google Services keeps running in the background and I have to force stop it to eliminate the notification.

Anyway, after the update on the phone side to firmware version 34.4.A.2.32, things have improved dramatically for me. AA now starts as reliably as with Android 7.1.1. I rebooted the CMU a number of times and it keeps working. I don't know if it's just a fluke on the phone side though and if, say, it will be back to semi-not-working after the next phone reboot (I dare not try), but for now I'm enjoying it working again.

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· #10 · Apr 10, 2018

I rebooted the phone today and it still connected to the car without problems, twice. I'm guessing you are on the CE1 firmware? For some reason it seems to get updated much slower than the US one, although the Oreo update for US wasn't exactly quick either.

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· #12 · Apr 10, 2018

Today my phone (with US firmware) got an update to 34.4.A.2.50 (April security update). AA (3.1) keeps working after the update.

I haven't had any of the problems with my phone that you describe but then I'm a very light phone user. I don't care about bluetooth (I keep it disabled in the CMU; I only listen to the radio and I don't call people when driving) or the fingerprint reader (I don't even use a screenlock since I don't keep anything important on the phone). I have it because it's relatively compact (I would actually prefer it to be a little smaller, but good luck finding something decent in this size); I saw that the XZ2 Compact has grown so I'm not interested.

I am actually thinking of rolling back AA to 2.9 as well, because from 3.0 it integrates the Google Assistant, which seems to be extremely intrusive privacy-wise. Unless you agree to forward all your phone data to Google (calls, messages, web history), pretty much none of the more advanced voice commands seem to work. Annoying.

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