Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Moto G Bluetooth Fails

Moto G 2nd Generation has a problem with Bluetooth on Android 5.02.
I spent almost 4 days speaking directly with Motorola and their so called level 3 tech support and they figure it's my devices fault and refuse to do anything about it.  Now note that before my phone was upgraded from KitKat to Lollipop the Bluetooth worked just fine.
We went through many trouble shooting steps including the all dreadful resetting the entire phone.
Now if it was just my device that had a problem I would leave this issue alone,  but if you google Moto G and Bluetooth you will find thousands of people having this problem.
Bluetooth is not supposed to be a hit or miss thing,  it's an industry standard.

Here is the problem.  When I connect a device the Wi-Fi shuts down after 5 minutes.  Not 6, but exactly 5 I timed it.  Now because this happens with one set of headphones and not the others they decided to blame the device.   I tried the headphones in question on multiple other Bluetooth items like other phones,  my iPad running iOS 9.1  and the headphones work fine.  I even have a USB dongle in my computer and they work fine there too.
Just to be clear my headphones that don't work with the Moto G are Sennheiser for 350$ and the others that do work are Kinivo BTH220 that cost 20 dollars.  The difference is that the Sennheiser have a codec called APT-X which is supposed to improve the quality of the Bluetooth not cause it to cancel it out.

So if your Moto G has a problem with Wi-Fi turn off the Bluetooth and it will probably work.  Try another Bluetooth device and see if it works.   Or just don't buy the Moto G.  Which is a shame because mostly it's a good phone at a great price.  But with no Bluetooth you can't use it when driving.

I welcome all comments from anyone with a Moto G in hopes of finding a solution that Motorola seems to be not interested in providing.