USB iPhone connection issues

Follow-up. I connected my iPhone to the Prius Prime+ 2018 via Bluetooth. My iPod is still connected via USB. But Entune shows nothing connected to the USB port. I'll try again with the iPhone turned off and see if the iPod comes back. All pretty glitchy and silly. I mean, if you CAN connect it, it should work.

 

Has anyone received any solution to this problem? I'm going to take mine to the dealer to see why it's doing this, but if it's just the way it is I don't want to waste the money.

 

Back in April my newly licensed daughter totaled my 2012 Prius C 3 so I decided to purchase a previously owned 2017 Prius Prime Advance. Realistically i don’t think I could afford to buy new, even with tax incentives, and wait a couple more months for the 2020. Anywho, as much as I love my car, I was blown away about what crap the Entune system turned out to be, and the fact that they downgraded the USB port. Leaving the dealership and embarking on my 1 hr and 40 minute drive home, I plugged in my iPhone 6s Plus just to hear the music to start cutting in and out before it completely stopped. It wouldn’t even stay connected to charge. My phone constantly beeped as if plugging in and unplugging the phone. I was shocked since I knew it was a new charging cable that worked perfectly fine in my Prius C. I took it to my local dealer since it was still under manufacture warranty. What I was told is, the car was optimized for Bluetooth connection and the usb is really only there in order to listen to audio off of usb flash drives. It wasn’t intended for use with charging or utilizing your smart phone. What BS is that? News flash, if the car was optimized for Bluetooth connection, than maybe the Bluetooth should stay connected. I drive to work, I drive home on lunch with no problem. I hop in my car a half hour later to head back and hit Bluetooth just for my car to say “Bluetooth not connected”. Really? Really? At least I had Pandora on my Prius C and a fully functioning USB port. The navigation is just as crappy as it was in my C. You can appreciate my frustration, can’t you? I know I didn’t roll this Prime off the lot brand spanking new like I did my much beloved 2012 C, but there is a 5 year difference and the cars are on opposite sides of the Prius spectrum. I expected some Infotainment improvement not for features to be taken away. Apparently all those Toyota surveys meant nothing.

 

Any fix for this that you have seen? I just bought a used 2018 today and experienced this on the ride home from the dealership. Not feeling so great now.

 

New software update was found that lists fixes for USB issues.
Software update from Feb 2020? | PriusChat
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2020/MC-10172857-9999.pdf

 

I’ve found that having a song in the music app is enough to register my iPhone. Then I can play music from Spotify after it connects. My boyfriends iPhone won’t connect and he doesn’t have music downloaded. Seems to hold up with the few phones I’ve tested.

what’s more annoying to me is that adjusting the volume will sometimes pause a you tube video I’m listening and start playing the song I have in the music app.

 

Hello, 2021 Prius prime plug-in XLE here,

i’m having a very similar problem. While initially my iPhone would connect perfectly well with my car using a USB cable, it does not connect anymore. Also, it will not even charge from the USB port and I have to use a cigarette charger adapter to force charge it in analog. Also, the inductive charging plate would never ever connect and charge with my phone. It never worked from day one. The inductive plate would charge for like two or three seconds and then it would stop and turn orange which means it’s not charging. My problems began when I turned off Siri on my iPhone, because I’m an American, and I like privacy, and not to have an artificial intelligence monitoring and spying on everything I do like an evil Skynet computer. But as soon as I did that, come up, my Prius no longer connected with my iPhone, in terms of CarPlay. There’s no reason why it should need Siri to do that, it should be able to be fully functional without this evil and obnoxious artificial intelligence. It’s like a punishment, you turn off Siri than your car no longer helps you. Anyways, I turned off Siri and then my car would no longer to CarPlay. However, it still used to connect with USB, charge from a USB, and play music as an iPod, even though it wouldn’t do CarPlay. I was able to do this for a while, but then I eventually turned on Siri again, and it very briefly did CarPlay again… but it was inconsistent. Sometimes CarPlay would work, and sometimes it would not work, sometimes the phone with connect, and sometimes the phone would not connect. Sometimes it would charge sometimes it would not. But then it just broke completely and now it will not play CarPlay, it will not charge, and I cannot use it as an iPod without CarPlay. However, I can still use Bluetooth to play music. Being able to use, Bluetooth is nice but it’s a workaround not a fix or a solution. I would like to be able to use USB iPod, and CarPlay and inductive charging … without Siri. I have a lot of similar experiences of iffy connection to all of you. I don’t know, I have an iPhone 8 plus. It’s 2023. What do you think? I’m going into the dealer soon, I guess. I can tell them about it.