[Updated] Android Auto users report Weather card and connectivity issues

Update (May 17):

Google has officially called the weather card issue fixed. The confirmation came from a Google employee on a relevant thread addressing the matter on the company’s official help forum, saying

We believe we found the underlying root cause of the missing weather cards, and it should be fixed at this point. Internally, we’re running a postmortem so that we can learn about what went wrong and how we can prevent similar issues from occurring in the future. Apologies from the team for the missing weather cards over the past few weeks, and thank you all for your patience as we address this and make it more robust moving forward.

Update (May 05):

Users report that the problem continues to exist despite the latest update (v3.2), and here’s what Google says:

With the recent changes that went out, our metrics indicate that we are currently serving more weather cards now compared to several weeks ago. But clearly some of you are still not getting them 🙁 The team has been trying to reproduce this issue but so far no luck. This is quite challenging to debug for a variety of reasons. We will continue to investigate, but in the meantime, please double check that Android Auto has been granted the Location permission, and that you’re logged into the (separate) Google app with your Google account. Also, your device needs to have an active data connection in order to fetch these cards.

Update (April 24):

Fix incoming to improve the weather card glitch confirms Google. More information here.

Original story:

Of late, Android Auto users have been highlighting a couple of new issues, which have been quickly passed on to the concerned teams, presumably for an in-depth analysis. Lets take a look at them one by one:

Weather card is missing

Going by reports on different help forums (1,2,3), after a recent update, the weather card is not displaying on the car’s head unit. A quick go through the following user comments will give you more clarity on the matter.

My weather card is missing graphics on the left of the tile. There’s no image of sun, cloud, rain, etc. It’s just blank. Does anyone know what’s causing this? The temp and location seems accurate but there are no image icons displayed on the left of the weather card. If I ask google for the weather forecast, I get a correct forecast for the week.

Soon after the problem was highlighted, one of the forum experts escalated the issue, saying

I have passed this along to the Android Auto team. This has happened in the past and it is usually related to an update with the Google app.

Following which, one of the Android Auto team members recently said

We’ve forwarded this issue to the team.

AA not working with Essential Phone after Android 8.1

As some of you may already know, Essential Phone started receiving Android 8.1 update in the mid of March. And since then, a significant number of Essential (PH-1) users have been reporting connectivity issues with Android Auto (1,2). Here’s how some of those affected explain the problem:

I was successfully using AA on my Essential Phone (using Honda Ridgeline Infotainment system). After installing the Oreo OTA, I can no longer get AA to work in my car.When I connect my phone via USB to my Honda, the Honda system displays the following message:
“Android Auto unable to start on this Android device. Would like to enable Android Auto on this device? Please select “Off” and reconnect the USB cable to use other smartphone connection methods.”

I just actualize my esential phone to Android 8.1.0 and stopped working my connection with android auto everything worked fine before the upgrade.

Car – 2018 Hyundai Sonata
Phone – Essential PH1
Android Version – Oreo 8.1 Beta
Every now and then it will work. No idea why that happens but usually when I connect I get nothing. On Nougat I had zero issues.

Despite the limited number of reports, the problem in question has being considered by Google. Don from Android Auto team recently updated one of the complainants saying:

We forwarded your bug report to our engineers

While both the issues have been passed on to the concerned teams, they are yet to be officially acknowledged. We hope Google figures out as well as fixes whatever is causing the glitch sooner than later. Meanwhile, we are keeping a close tab on all related developments, and will keep you posted.

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