Some dealers and consumers are reporting a recent glitch using Apple CarPlay with certain iPhones that have been updated to the newest iOS 11.3.1, introduced over a month ago.
In some cases, when the user connects his phone to a CarPlay enabled radio, the reception is garbled when he places a call (it’s the call’s recipient that gets poor audio reception).
The problem appears to occur on aftermarket as well as OEM radios, according to complaints on the Apple support forum and in calls to retailers and suppliers.
Retailers who receive complaints may tell their customers to connect their phones via Bluetooth instead of by a direct cord connection. The problem does not manifest over Bluetooth.
Kenwood said “We are aware of the issue and are working on gathering the facts as to a fix for the issue.” Alpine and Pioneer said they had not received complaints but Alpine said it was aware of the general problem.
Apparently, the problem can vary from carrier to carrier.
One retailer said two members of the same family on different carriers had different results. A mother found her phone worked just fine with CarPlay over Verizon, but her son, on AT&T had the above calling issue. The retailer said he had received complaints from 3 customers in the past week.
On the Apple iPhone support forum users posted questions such as the following:
XWB entitled “Problems with voice during CarPlay calls since iOS 11.3”
since the iOS 11.3 update, I’ve got problems with calls in my Seat Car. When people call me and my iPhone 7 is connected via CarPlay with my car, people hear my voice distorted/ blurred which makes it hard or impossible for them to understand mr. If my phone is connected via bluetooth, the call will work perfectly and my voice is just fine.
Does anybody have the same problem oder encountered anything similar? I would really appreciate any kind of feedback!
Two hundred eighty five people said they had the same question.
Also rickfromwoongarrah asked:
Anyone else having issues with CarPlay phone call quality (you can hear the person that is talking perfectly but all they hear from you is just a garbled mess, issue is not present if using BlueTooth) after updating to iOS 11.3?
Verified as an iOS 11.3 issue by plugging in multiple pre iOS 11.3 phones into the same car using the same lightning cable. No issues whatsoever with any of them.
It is not a problem with my CarPlay system as has been suggested in many other posts about this issue,it is iOS 11.3 causing this behaviour. The rollback window for 11.2.6 has been closed so I can no longer downgrade to this. Over 60 people had the same question
Glitches with Apple Car Play aren’t RARE…
I had this problem also in my personal car. Yesterday, I signed up with Apple to be a Beta customer. I downloaded iOS 11.4.6 and this solved all of my phone clarity issues!