You see, I just wanted to listen to my Podcasts. Well, it actually started with some French Radio podcasts (to improve my speaking and listening before an exchange visit to Angers), but then I got into the Friday Night Comedy from BBC and it snowballed from there. Unfortunately, I had to burn them all to CDs so that I could play them in the car – though I could listen to them on earphones while walking the dog. I have a lot of wasted CDs!
So, I bought myself a Kenwood DPX-7000DAB
Then, a couple of weeks ago, it all went wrong. The car came back from an MOT (it passed – amazing) but the Engine light came on and stayed on. Nothing to do with the Bluetooth problem, but after I took it back into the garage (who cancelled the alerts to see if they came back), when the car returned all the problems with the stereo happened.
First, the DAB radio showed No Signal, and when I switched to my lovely podcasts, they kept stopping – sometimes for a few seconds. The DAB stations were recovered when I forced it to update – phew. But the podcast interruptions were more persistently annoying. The pauses were bad enough, but the squashed speech afterwards as it tried to catch up were even worse. The same happened with music – though slightly more bearable.
The Cause
The first task was to isolate the problem.
As it affected both Podcasts and Amazon Music, it wasn’t the app itself. I usually have Google Maps running (I know my way home, but it gets me around the worst of the M56/M6 Motorway traffic) but the problem continued when I turned it off. So that wasn’t the cause.
The radio played fine (once I’d solved that particular problem) as did CDs.
I connected the phone up to the USB using the charging cable and it worked fine – but the cable sticks out and gets in the way, so I didn’t want that to be ‘The Solution’ to the problem.
Finally, I resorted to Google to find some answers. There were a few suggestions, but none mentioned the solution that actually worked. I found that by accident…
Solutions
The first suggestion was to replace the SD card as apparently, only Samsung’s own cards work properly in their phones. Well, I’d already crossed that bridge when I lost some photos in my last Samsung phone.
Next, they suggested I re-pair the phone to the Bluetooth – so I opened the Bluetooth settings, removed the existing pairing and paired it again. I did this while connected via USB because it’s so much easier, no pin codes to type in.
There were other suggestions which I didn’t get around to, rooting the phone (no thanks), performing a factory rest (you’re kidding!) or just a software update (it’s up to date).
In the end, though, I fixed it by accident. The phone battery ran out – I forgot to charge the phone (it lasts pretty well, normally) and so it turned itself off. When I turned it back on, the problem was fixed.
So, if the same problem affects you’re phone, I’d suggest trying a combination of these solutions. Hopefully, one of them will solve your problem.
Anyway, that engine light came back on again. That’s going to cost a pretty penny. 🙁