bruce_miranda

I use an unlimited data SIM in the car as a WiFi hotspot so that while in the car, everyone has free WiFi. Just bought the Motorola MA1 Wireless Android Auto dongle. It works great, however what I hadn't appreciated was that now the phone uses its WiFi network to communicate with the Android Auto dongle, so the data is being sucked from the phone's SIM.

Anyone know of any tricks that allow me to continue using the data from the car's SIM rather than the phone's SIM.

Nuchae

An interesting problem.

I did a quick search and found this is a commonly reported issue with an inability to use the vehicle hotspot and the Motorola adapter.

From
https://9to5google.com/2022/07/15/android-auto-wi-fi/ If the hotspot is connected, Android Auto doesn’t work. If Android Auto is connected, mobile data is used instead of the hotspot. Another user on Google’s forums reports similar behavior because of the difference between the 5GHz network used for Android Auto and the 2.4GHz network used for most hotspots. It appears that this happened to both of these users following recent updates, specifically Android Auto 7.8 in the case on Reddit.

It’s unclear if these changes to Wi-Fi are especially widespread with recent Android Auto updates, but Google has yet to offer any comment on the matter. Notably, it’s also possible that this is related to the wireless connectivity issues also present for some with recent updates.


Some have suggested trying to change the frequency of the mobile hot spot to 5GHz. However, there are no posted successes.

A4Audi4Fun

Can you turn off the Mobile Data connection on the phone when driving? Phone WiFi should then connect to your WiFi hotspot.

bruce_miranda

The issue is that once in the car, the phone uses its WiFi connection to connect to the AA dongle. AA needs the phone to have its own data connection for AA, so it uses its own Mobile data for that because its WiFi connection is already busy talking to the AA dongle.

When you use a wired connection, the WiFi connection is free to connect to the car's WiFi hotspot So the phone uses that to pull the AA data through.

I bet this issue also affects Wireless Car Play too. And this isnt the AA Dongle issue because even if the car could natively support Wireless AA, I would run into the same problem.

superswiss

That's an Android/Android Auto/hardware limitation if it doesn't work. iOS can simultaneously use wireless CarPlay and connect to a hotspot. Windows can also do the same with Miracast. You can connect to a Miracast wireless display and to a hotspot for Internet at the same time, although the hardware has to support it.

bruce_miranda

Interesting, so let me check if there are any settings on the phone that I have not set correctly that might be the issue here. It could also be that I have set up wireless AA incorrectly, because it uses both Bluetooth and WiFi and maybe I shouldn't have connected to the AA WiFi explicitly and just chosen the Bluetooth.
I will report back on what I find.

BTW the Motorola MA1 dongle works quite well. And sits nicely snug in the small, otherwise useless, division behind the phone's wireless charging pad in the armrest. So its all very unobtrusive.

superswiss

You should not connect to the AA WiFi explicitly. You only need a Bluetooth connection. It will setup the WiFi connection on its own. If you explicitly connect to the AA WiFi then your phone thinks that's the hotspot, but won't be able to route traffic to the Internet and falls back to cellular data.

bruce_miranda

I think you might be right and that is the error I made here. I'll report back later.

The only new issue we have now is ignoring the "Your mobile phone is still in the vehicle" voice prompt when we leave the car.

superswiss

You can turn that off.

bruce_miranda

I knew about this but I didn't want to turn it off, as the prompt makes you glance at the wireless charging pad to check if you have indeed forgotten your phone or not.