At present it is almost mandatory that our car has a wireless communication system. The famous ‘hands-free’ allows our smartphone to connect to the vehicle’s audio system and allows us to receive calls without taking our hands off the wheel. In addition, it has banished the famous bluetooth accessories that were put on the ears and are not allowed.
This connection technology is present in all price ranges and even in the simplest mobiles or feature phones. This allows us to connect the mobile to the car’s Bluetooth in a simple way and through different options. In addition to being able to receive or make calls, we will be able to keep our eyes and attention on the road since we will not have to touch the phone at all once it is started.
How do I connect the mobile to the car
The steps are very simple, but we must follow an order. The first thing we have to do is activate it on our smartphone before starting the vehicle.
To do this, we enter Settings> Connections> Bluetooth and click on the switch to activate this connectivity. Once done, we must start it and look for it in the list of available Bluetooth connections. Once done, we play in neutral cars and wait for the connection to be completed.
Some vehicles may ask us for a passcode . The most common by default are ‘0000’ or ‘1234’. If it is not any of these, we must consult the manual of our vehicle to have the correct key. Once done, the vehicle will be ready to receive and send calls or play multimedia content. If we are making the connection in an area with a large influx of vehicles, it is possible that there are several possible similar connections, so it is recommended to make the connection in an isolated area.
In the event that it has worked for you, but at one time or another it has stopped working for some reason, you must remove the car from the devices saved in the Bluetooth section of your mobile phone. To do this, you will have to go to settings> Connections or Connected devices> Bluetooth. Then, you must click on your vehicle and click on Delete or Unlink device. Finally, pair your phone back to the vehicle.
If you are going to use Android Auto
Android Auto is a pre-installed tool on a large number of Android smartphones and can be shared with many vehicles. What we need in this case is to have a smartphone compatible with Android 6 or higher. However, we must take into account the following questions, such as whether it is compatible with the vehicle’s screen and, above all, how to install this software. In addition, thanks to this software we can make calls while driving or listen to music from the mobile phone in the car.
Is it compatible with the car screen?
This option allows you to connect the mobile phone to the vehicle via Bluetooth, but also adapts the Android Auto interface to the car screen. In this case, we must make sure that our car is compatible with the Android Auto screen. Then we plug one end of a USB cable into the vehicle’s USB port and connect the other end to our Android phone. We just have to accept the steps that appear on the screen. This phone connection will be activated automatically when Android Auto is connected to the car via USB cable.
How to install it
If we have already paired the phone with the car previously via Bluetooth, we will only have to select it to enable the automatic start of Android Auto . The ‘OK Google’ command will allow us to make calls, answer them, play songs on various services such as Spotify or start a specific navigation with Google Maps. But, if you don’t have this application, you can download it from the following link:
Although, if in your case you have a smartphone with Android 10 or higher, it will not be necessary, because it will come standard. In addition, if your car has an infotainment device with Android but does not include Android Auto, we can download it by connecting it to the Internet and get this app through an .APK . In this way, we can listen to the calls, as well as the music from the mobile.
Connection problems
When trying to connect our mobile phone to the vehicle through this type of connection, different problems may arise on the road, causing us to not be able to listen to music from the mobile phone in the car. But, each of them will have a solution that will make us connect the phone to the car via Bluetooth without any failure.
Multimedia sound cannot be heard
In this circumstance two things can happen. The first is that the vehicle is not compatible with this option, generally due to age. In this way, the multimedia sound of the phone will not be emitted by the hands-free once the two devices are paired. This would not be the case with calls, which will be issued correctly.
It may also happen that we do not have it activated in the connectivity options with our car. To check this, we go back to Settings> Connections> Bluetooth and touch the connection to see if we have both the calls and multimedia audio boxes checked. If not, we will have to activate it so that this option is also available.
Not paired
This error can occur due to different factors. The first of them occurs because our vehicle is not compatible with this connection of our mobile device. It may sound strange, but maybe the radio is too old and, therefore, the multimedia sound of our smartphone cannot be emitted either through the vehicle’s hands-free or through the speakers.
Although, the problem may also be really that we do not have it activated in the connectivity options with our vehicle, something that usually happens more times than we think. So it will be as simple as checking it by accessing Settings> Connections> Bluetooth and touching the connection to see if everything is in order. Well, when accessing this section we see that precisely the device that we have connected does not have audio enabled.
Name does not appear
However, the truth is that it is also the case that the device that we want to connect to the phone does not appear in this list. Even when we know that it is active at that moment. Luckily, it has an easy solution, as this could be because this device is shown with no name. In order for it to be detected without any problem, there is a setting in our phones, within the developer options, that makes all devices appear, even if they do not have a name. In order to activate this option we must Access Settings> System or About the phone> Press 7 times on the compilation number. In this way, we will have activated the developer options. Then, go back and enter this section> look for the option Show Bluetooth devices without a name and activate the switch.
Reestablish the connection
This option is often called Reset Network Settings, although the name may vary depending on the customization layer of your smartphone. This function will allow us to restore both Wi-Fi settings and this type of connection that we are seeing right now, without losing any data other than the phone. Therefore, we must go to Settings> System> Reset> Reset network settings and execute the action. Then, try again to connect the mobile to the car through this connection. And generally, it shouldn’t give you any problems.
