Nexus 6P Android 7.0 Nougat Bluetooth issues

[hallux]

I'm having the exact same issue except with my LG headset or any other bluetooth. BT just disables after a minute or two - but then later in the day seems to work and stay on for some reason. Two days in a row.

I went to the google forum yesterday - they had me boot into safe mode and it stayed on, I booted back normally and it disabled after a minute. They are saying it's a downloaded app causing the issue, but I swear the issue started after getting the google connectivity service update three days ago.

I need help if anyone figures this out .

Just wanted to post one response from a Nexus 6p owner (since December) who has had no BT issues. I use BT all the time with this phone. I had no problems with any BT functionality while on Marshmallow, and nothing has changed with Nougat. There must be some phones out there that have hardware issues. I would be in touch directly with Google about it, cuz that would drive me crazy to not have full BT functionality.

Same for me.. No issues with MM or Nugat it hooks up fast and stays connected..

I flashed the NRD90U OTA last night using ADB. I had no issues this morning when listening to music through my BT headset (Motorola S-11 Flex HD if it matters) for nearly an hour. Play/pause/skip worked, I didn't lose connection after only a few minutes. On top of that, battery life seems to be unaffected, it's been off charge for ~13 hours and with that hour of music listening I'm only down to 80% (I haven't fiddled with it too much).

 

[PGrey]

I'm having the disconnect problem as well, and I have only a small set of apps, having recently moved over from Win Phone (I'm more or less platform agnostic too, although no real iOS stuff).

Up until I upgraded to 7.0, things were great, my battery didn't drain from leaving Bluetooth on, and my car and other audio connections worked pretty much flawlessly, I don't think it ever disconnected a single time in my first 6 weeks of ownership.
On 7.0 however, I can't keep my phone running the whole day, unless I turn my BT off completely, when I'm not using it, the drain is maybe 4-5 times normal.

The worst part though, is that my car disconnects, constantly, when I'm the middle of conversations. The first couple of times, I just thought I had lost cell signal, but then I realized, my caller was still connected (after maybe 3-4 of these, they happen ALL the time), but my BT car display had popped up a quick message saying my 6P had disconnected itself.
It's dangerous, trying to get it reconnected too, while driving, and I'm pretty sure it's not legal either (we're a hands-free state, which is great by me, but if your hands-free doesn't work, well...).

I posted in the ProductForums as well, there are quite a few threads, so I added my comments there, and created a thread about my "network settings reset" not actually resetting my settings (okay it resets WiFi, but not Bluetooth or Cell).

So far, there were a couple of Google posts, and a couple of "expert" posts, but nothing even remotely resembling a suggestion of a fix or similar, other than "factory reset", if "network settings reset" doesn't work.
It would seem like I shouldn't need to back up everything (and hope that it restores), and factory-reset my 2 month old phone, really, that's the solution, to a s/w issue with Bluetooth?

 

[GSDer]

On 7.0 however, I can't keep my phone running the whole day, unless I turn my BT off completely, when I'm not using it, the drain is maybe 4-5 times normal.

Which 7.0 build are you running - NRD90T or NRD90U?

If the former, I'd suggest manually loading the latter - it helped with my battery issues; perhaps it'll help with your Bluetooth issues.

 

[PGrey]

Which 7.0 build are you running - NRD90T or NRD90U?

If the former, I'd suggest manually loading the latter - it helped with my battery issues; perhaps it'll help with your Bluetooth issues.

NRD90U. I pulled the OTA build and used ADB (even though I'm new to Android, I'm NOT at all new to flashing ALL kinds of firmware, I've been a s/w and h/w developer and tech PM most of my time out there...).
It went fine, and everything looked okay, until I left BT on, and it totally nuked my battery in about 1/2 of a day. Before the update, it was a non-issue.
Then the issues started where I couldn't get my phone to stay connected to my car (and other) Bluetooth audio devices, which is crazy-frustrating, almost making the phone unusable, by current standards.

I get that it could be some weird app (maybe, I don't have many installed, yet), but why only in Nougat then, why didn't it show up in MM?

Truthfully, I'd really like to get back to MM, but ideally without wiping my system, which I don't think is possible, unfortunately. I'd go back, and sit/wait, until some of this falls out.
I've had Android tablets for a long time, and to-date, updates where nothing but good, but this one, I don't know...

I really, really hope that someone at Google is on top of this, there are posts in the Google product forums hundreds of "me to's", and those are the people who know how/where to go seek help.
So far, I've only seen a couple of Google people acknowledge that there's an issue, but that was it, they went silent after that, some time ago.
Part of me wonders, if the 6P and 5X (and others) are getting the short-end, while they work on finalizing the latest (new Pixel or whatever) devices?

 

[GSDer]

It went fine, and everything looked okay, until I left BT on, and it totally nuked my battery in about 1/2 of a day.

I assume that for most of that half day you had Bluetooth on but weren't connected to a device?

I'll give it a whack and see what happens.

Since you're pretty experienced it should be relatively quick to load the final 6.0.1 image and get back to a usable state. Probably better than waiting for Google to come out with a fix.

 

[PGrey]

Well, maybe, on the device. When I'm around home, I have a Mynt "phone finder" device, that it connects to. Sometimes I leave an earpiece or BT speaker-phone device on too, it just depends.
And when I'm in the car, it connects to that, sort of, except when it decides to randomly disconnect, with 7.0.

All this was the same (Mynt device and car) in MM though, same phone, and zero issues.

Yeah, I suppose, what I'm not so experienced at is what gets auto-populated if I do a factory reset, on Android, vs what I have to go back and install/set.
On a Win Phone, I could do this in maybe 10-15 minutes, a task many think is daunting, but you get pretty good at it, if you're running beta builds for any time at all.

If I were fairly convinced that that a re-image and getting stuff back to normal was not too tricky, and that it was likely to fix my issue, I'd probably do it.
What I suspect is the case though, is that something like my Mynt device or similar is triggering a bug in the BT stack, in 7.0. Not being a "real Android guy", I don't know how to debug this, hence my post here, and my "me too" on the product forums.
There are pages and pages of this on the Nexus product forums, I'm surprised more aren't posting here, but that's probably a better place, although it's not as if the Google guys are exactly doing much...

Edit: Here's a good pointer to more or less what I'm seeing (not the Google product forums, but a bug report and history): https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=213504
As you can see, others did a full reset here, and it didn't fix the issue.
The same is true on the Google forums too, lots of people tried a full reset, and a small number reported it fixed, whereas the majority said it persisted.

I could probably even live with the battery problem, it's the BT drops in my car that are the worst, that's a really bad experience; one I'd say I've had >20 times now, in about two weeks. Same deal with this one, comments seemed to be that mostly a factory reset didn't fix it either.

Thanks for the replies, BTW, I just realized I sound a bit grumpy here, but it's just that, I'm grumpy at my fairly-new phone, not at you, or the forum, my bad there, I was a pretty high Win Phone forum "helper", so I was hoping to build a base here eventually too, not exactly getting a great start though...

 

[GSDer]

Well, I can't reproduce the behavior you described merely by having Bluetooth turned on.

I'll try connecting to a Bluetooth speaker (but not actually playing anything) and see if things suddenly change. I'll read your last post in awhile - in the middle of things ATM.

 

[GSDer]

Yeah, I suppose, what I'm not so experienced at is what gets auto-populated if I do a factory reset, on Android, vs what I have to go back and install/set.

There's another thread that deals with what gets restored after a Factory Reset and what you have to handle manually. In short:
Items retained
- pretty much anything Google (Contacts, Gmail, Keep, etc)
- WiFi passwords
- installed apps (but not data) [if you have this turned on; I don't]

Items you need to prepare for
- SMS/MMS (try something like SMS Backup & Restore https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...om.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore&token=LBsLSBRs - be sure to enable backup to Google Drive or Dropbox)
- list of currently installed apps (try something like Share Apps https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...?id=com.theronrogers.shareapps&token=2O7RBJm- - save that list to the clipboard and then paste it into Google Keep)
- pictures/videos (I use Google Photos which backs all of that up to Google Drive)
- 'desktop' settings (Home screen, whatever you want to call it) - if you're using a 3rd party launcher you can usually backup those settings; just remember to save it to the cloud
- app data - as previously mentioned, Google doesn't save that; if you must have it you can try https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ils?id=com.koushikdutta.backup&token=iBh_MdsC (no root required)

 

[anon(8328984)]

My issue with Bluetooth, is that it won't turn on or off a lot of times. No matter if I toggle it in quick settings or in the settings app itself.

 

[PGrey]

Well, I can't reproduce the behavior you described merely by having Bluetooth turned on.I'll try connecting to a Bluetooth speaker (but not actually playing anything) and see if things suddenly change. I'll read your last post in awhile - in the middle of things ATM.

Yeah, I don't doubt it could be one of my BT devices, such as my Mynt "device finder", or my home PC, or my car, when I'm traveling.

It's weird though, I had zero issues on MM, for the 5-6 weeks I had it, and then I upgraded, and not only can I not keep the battery charged, if I have BT on, but I also can't get it stay connected while I'm talking, in my car, that part is truly maddenning! ;-]

I get that odd-device/app things happen, 100%, and that there can be ill-developed apps (as a s/w and h/w engineer I'm ultra-aware here). In all this though, I don't think the OS transition (6.01->7.0) should be the culprit though, it was pretty clear-cut for me, it was almost instant, in particular the auto-disconnects in my car (I've gone back to using speaker-phone, not near as usuable, but consistent).
These threads show how pervasive it is too:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/nexus/rz3BGwI-BDA
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/nexus/09F2S5ecJrI
You can see a lot of people, like myself, sort of saying stuff like "shouldn't the upgrade just-work?" and "did Google even test this, across several devices and BT audio connections".
If it's an ill-developed app, which is doing something that is now corrected on 7.0, fine, sandbox it, and let us know, don't just let it go off the deep-end, and disconnect the phone from BT audio all the time, or let it drain the device.

It's frustrating, I left Win Phone, after being on that platform since its inception (I've written some apps and such on that side, know the platform really well), got myself all psyched to move to a good, solid Android phone, which it was, until I went to 7.0..

Maybe 7.1 is the answer, apparently that's going to populate the new devices, and hopefully fix some of these issues.

 

[PGrey]

I experimented a bit today with this.

Went through, flushed my cache partition again, let things settle, reset my networks again, deleted all my BT devices, and re-added, but left my Mynt device off this time, and my PC as well (didn't set up pairing with either).
Charged my phone to 100% after, and then left BT on. About two hours later, I went from 100->95%, 4% of which was Android OS, and mostly seemed to be "Radio packets", which I would assume is my BT radio.
Turned BT off after that, and let it sit for about 4 hours (twice as long), and I had lost a whopping 1%.

I suppose it could be coincidental, if I got a bunch more cell or WiFi packets in that same timeframe, but it sure seemed to me like it was draining on the order of 8-10% faster. I know my sample-size is small/short, but it's still interesting...

 

[GSDer]

not only can I not keep the battery charged, if I have BT on

Sorry, I'm not going to be much help. I had Bluetooth turned on but not connected to anything in my last data point above; immediately after that I connected to a Bluetooth speaker (which is just sitting in the living room) and left it connected since then (except for 4 hours that I was away from the house) - as you can see my battery data does not show the sudden drop you're describing.

My car doesn't have Bluetooth so I can't help you out in that regard. Not sure what else I can suggest or try for comparison purposes. Go back to Marshmallow and wait it out.

 

[GSDer]

About two hours later, I went from 100->95%, 4% of which was Android OS, and mostly seemed to be "Radio packets", which I would assume is my BT radio.

Where do you see these 'radio packets' listed? In Settings -> Battery -> Android OS all I see are 'Mobile packets sent/received' which clearly seems to be cellular rather than Bluetooth.

 

[Jesslynh]

It's Nougat, not the phone. While I'm not a down in weeds tech like some of you, I can offer my opinion as a user.
I listen to Audible in the car on my commute and have a Moto 360 and wireless headphones that are used all day everyday. I wasn't having issues with any connections prior to Nougat.

My watch's connection to my phone constantly drops and won't automatically reconnect, the same with the headphones that I've had for years. It's a crap shoot for my crappy 2010 Maxima that came with full iOS compatiblity, but no audio for Android, but nevertheless the phone connection has always worked flawlessly. Now it comes and goes. My headphones seem to be able to cope, automatically disconnecting and reconnecting, but the car and my watch do not.

I bit the bullet and did a FR, which got rid of all the app crashing, but it did nothing for Bluetooth. At this point I'm just happy I don't have a battery drain issue as well.

 

[PGrey]

Where do you see these 'radio packets' listed? In Settings -> Battery -> Android OS all I see are 'Mobile packets sent/received' which clearly seems to be cellular rather than Bluetooth.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it falls under the WiFi packets, at one point I fiddled around, sent a bunch of BT data, and saw it get counted there. Obviously, without the granularity to differentiate the BT/WiFi packets, it's tough to peg this.

I appreciate your checking, I wonder why you don't see this, and why I do, even with no BT devices connected, it's pretty weird stuff.

It sounds like JesslynH has almost the exact same behavior as me, in terms of Bluetooth dropping connections, and not re-establishing without manual intervention. This is the biggest deal, I can (sort of) live with turning BT on/off manually, until it's fixed, but currently I more or less can't make calls in my car, that's a big one.
I'm VERY surprised Google isn't more on top of this. I see the bug that got filed, during the Beta, and sort of "fixed", not really though, if you follow the comments in the bug report, many users never stopped seeing the problem, despite Google having said they worked on it. It almost seems like they just shipped with it anyway, which is unfortunate. Obviously this is speculation, but it does seem fairly well-founded.

 

[PGrey]

I think it's my Mynt (BT device finder, remote shutter release, etc.) that's the issue, after upgrading to Nougat.

I removed it entirely (app and deleted it completely from BT) yesterday evening, and today I've had minimal drain.

The bummer is, it's really handy to have, and it worked without issue, until I went to Nougat...
Still have my fingers crossed for 7.1 or a service release, hopefully, it'd be nice to be able to use it again, I think I had it on my 6P for all of 4 weeks, before my upgrade.

 

[GSDer]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it falls under the WiFi packets, at one point I fiddled around, sent a bunch of BT data, and saw it get counted there. Obviously, without the granularity to differentiate the BT/WiFi packets, it's tough to peg this.

I'm going to have to disagree with your assessment. To check your assumption I fully charged the phone (to reset the Battery data), turned off WiFi, turned Bluetooth on and connected to a speaker, then disconnected the power and let music play for a half-an-hour or so (using my mobile data to stream) - as you can see in the screenshots there's no WiFi data listed, so it's clear that Bluetooth data is not being tracked here.

 

[PGrey]

I'm going to have to disagree with your assessment. To check your assumption I fully charged the phone (to reset the Battery data), turned off WiFi, turned Bluetooth on and connected to a speaker, then disconnected the power and let music play for a half-an-hour or so (using my mobile data to stream) - as you can see in the screenshots there's no WiFi data listed, so it's clear that Bluetooth data is not being tracked here.//uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160927/b4441e95e9878a8c9ddc116d61edbc75.jpg

My "Android OS" process (must be many, I'd guess processes, rolled-up) has 4812/3434 for WiFi packets received/sent, for a similar test, although I didn't do a direct Bluetooth drain like this, I just had my Mynt device on, and my PC set up for sync (just contacts automatically, it "should" only sync other if initiate it, which I do because I have a Qi charger filling up USB port;-]). This was for 18 hours of running.
If I turn off BT, my "Android OS" WiFi packets goes to zero, or very close to it.

I have don't a more empirical test like that, but I do have music on it, might try that tomorrow, when I've got some cycles to let it play for a bit, should be easy to see, one way or another.

Regardless of whether or not my BT packets are tracked this way, my "Android OS" process is at the top of the heap, in terms of battery use, every time, if I have BT left on, with no actual foreground BT usage (such as you did with music). If I turn BT off, "Android OS" drops to the very bottom, it's very relational, if not causal.

I left my Mynt off now for 18 almost 24 hours (and my BT on), and my battery drain is still more in that same process, but the numbers are less, I only lost about 24%, which includes some moderate use (few calls, some texting, a few web-browses, etc). It's better, but if I turn off BT entirely, I typically see far less for the same slice, at least 50%, whereas before Nougat, they were more or less equal...

I might look around and an "Android OS" tracking tool, although I don't want to root my phone (yet anyway), and I also suspect that any tool that's not very carefully constructed might simply introduce cycles itself, IME measuring things like OS cycles with outside tools can be "problematic", which is why Windows has the Perf Toolkit now. I need to dig more into the Android SDK, maybe there's something there, I've only scratched the surface after installing it.

Thanks for your test though, I appreciate it! It's interesting that your "Android OS" process is bumped during it, but has on WiFi packets like mine...
There's more going on here than meets the standard UI, obviously ;-]

 

[PGrey]

I assume that for most of that half day you had Bluetooth on but weren't connected to a device?

I'll give it a whack and see what happens.

Since you're pretty experienced it should be relatively quick to load the final 6.0.1 image and get back to a usable state. Probably better than waiting for Google to come out with a fix.

Sorry, I missed the email from the response, just saw this when I was back up on the forums...
I'm on the October patch build too, have been for awhile now.

Yeah, having Bluetooth on significantly drains things faster (I did a full battery optimization reset too, just for kicks), and having it connected to a device, like my PC or my Mynt-finder device, reallly drains, it crazy-fast.
If I just disable BT when I'm not using it, I'm close to MM battery rates, with the October patch, which is okay, for now, like you say, until Google gets a fix together .

I'm just slightly bummed about it, it's workable, but I was so psyched about being able to just leave BT on (this was pretty much never practical on WinPhone, also because of battery), and just have it connect when I got into the car, turned in my earpiece when I got a call, etc.
Now that I had that level of BT goodness, I want it back, this "hold on, while I enable BT and connect my earpiece/car/whatever" is for the birds, after seeing the "other side" ;-]

I've also started using a battery-saver toggle, which triggers data-saver too, so this could also be part of my "fix". It's not as annoying as I thought, I just have to sync emails and a couple of other things when I wake the phone up, otherwise most stuff stays in sync still, despite being in low-battery/low-radio mode.

 

[gquiring]

I upgraded to "N" about 3 days ago. Now it won't connect to my Panasonic cordless phone system that has BT. On Marshmallow my 6P was booting my Toyota 2015 highlander Entune system. 3 days in it's no better, I have to disable the BT to keep my Toyota from booting continually.