Exterior Antenna
 

Has anyone been able to use the exterior antenna for making phone calls? Is there any way to tell what antenna is being used while calling (ie. Handheld vs Car)?

It would be great to get 2 more bars of boost from the car antenna.

According to the manual it’s not available in all markets. How about Canada/US?

I'm in the Portland, OR, USA,area and have a 2019 55. If you look at the top right of the info bar at the top of the upper display, you should see two icons, one for the phone and one for the car wifi. Generally, I find if I drop my phone into the phone box, I'll gain one or two bars of signal strength. When I bought my car in Nov 2019, buyers received 6 months of complimentary Connect Prime and Connect Prime Plus service (from AT&T for 2019; 2021 models have Verizon). I have Verizon service for my phone, so I don't think your provider affects whether the antenna works for you. The Prime gives you Audi Navigation, traffic light alert, and a few other features. The "Plus" turns your car into a wifi hotspot. I know if you have BOTH (I subscribe to both, to get Alexa connectivity that I use to stream Tidal and Spotify from my phone without having to plug it in, and Amazon Prime Music Unlimited, which is included in the PLUS, access through the MMI), the phone box seems to work. I don't know is you have to have both, but I'm pretty sure you need to get at least the PRIME (level above the basic), but I may be mistaken!

I did not buy the optional WiFi Data plan but have 4 years of connect. The connect shows up as a separate LTE bar from the phone bar graph. I’ll try checking to see if the bars change as you mentioned. I always assumed the bar graph was just something the phone communicates to the MMI rather that indicating the external antenna strength.

The phone booster need to be registered with your cell phone provider to be recognized by the carrier. for AT&T go to: https://securec45.securewebsession.c...albooster.com/

You will need to put you car booster information that can be found on the MMI (I don't remember were). I have AT&T on my cell phone, and since I registered the booster I saw an improvement on the signal. Verizon have a similar way to register the booster. I hope this help.

My understanding is that the registration is an "honor system" sort of thing. The Box still works without registration, so test it out to see if it works. The FCC is not actively scanning to find boxes that have not been registered. But, if down the road, your phone box malfunctions in a way that gets the FCC's attention, then you could be charged a fine for not having registered the box.

I have one place on my commute where the road dips down a bit to cross a low bridge over a small creek and I drop calls there almost every time. I had hoped with the phone in the box that the booster might eliminate the problem, but sadly no.
Maybe there's just nothing there to boost
or maybe the thing isn't really helping or working.... I have no idea.
Otherwise I have not noticed a difference.

To test if it is working, check the signal bars on the MMI (upper right corner of the upper display) while stopped a various locations. I find in general, compared to holding the phone at chest height, if I slip the phone into the phone charging cradle, after brief pause, the icon will add one, sometimes two, bars in signal strength. So, the gain seems to be modest but there. Not that I am advising you to take your eyes off the road, but when you are in your "dip" do the signal bars drop to zero? If the bars drop to zero, then, yes, you cannot boost what is not there.

When my phone is in the "box", I definitely get better reception. There's a spot on my commute where I will consistently drop calls when the phone is not in the box, but when it's in the box, no problems. I usually see a 1-bar increase in signal strength when in the box.

Never really noticed a difference on any of my Audi's with Phone Box: https://www.audiworld.com/forums/q5-...e-box-2985953/

It works, adds bars. Never noticed it before. Thanks