This is a public service announcement. A little off topic for the MountGuys site. I spend a few weeks dealing with this. Why should you. My Bluetooth switches off on my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge running Android 6.1. All without my prompting and quite unexpected. Here’s how to troubleshoot and fix it. You won’t believe what finally did it.
Spoiler alert: skip to the end of this article if you have a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and try that first.
So here’s my problem. The Bluetooth would turn off for no apparent reason. I could be in the middle of a drive and maybe fifteen minutes after I left the house, it would turn itself off. I even tried this when sitting on my couch. So it certainly wasn’t environmental. It happened no matter where I was.
Trying to figure out what could be doing this, I went through a series of steps and it’s worth repeating for those dealing with an issue where the Bluetooth switches off unexpectedly on their Android phone. The steps aren’t unique to a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and can be applied to practically any Android phone.
I had been messing around with NFC technology and had even programmed a few to turn Bluetooth off and on. Maybe I was inadvertently turning it off by holding the phone too close to an NFC chip. I turned off the NFC option on my phone for a day. Nope that wasn’t it as the problem continued.
Maybe it was one of those apps that I use to speed up my phone’s performance? That made sense as it deactivates a lot of stuff to free resources like power and memory. Maybe my Bluetooth switches off because one of these apps is turning it off. I had an app called DU Speed Booster and Cleaner. I deleted the app. Didn’t help. Bluetooth still turning off by itself.
This was getting frustrating.
It was off to the internet I went searching for an answer. A Samsung forum suggested that I reset network selections. You can find this within the Android settings menu. Makes sense. This option resets the Wi-Fi, mobile data and Bluetooth to original settings. All of your saved passwords are wiped out when resetting network settings so be prepared to establish all network passwords all over again. It also resets the Bluetooth settings so you will need to re-establish your car’s settings.
I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, fifteen minutes after getting into the car, the problem where my Bluetooth switches off was back again. Darn.
The problem had to be caused by an app. While I thought for a short time perhaps my phone’s firmware was the culprit, that didn’t make sense as there would be thousands of people with the issue but based upon my internet search, that wasn’t the case.
The problem was happening for a few weeks so I deleted the apps one by one that were recently installed then found the culprit. Ready for this: the Walgreens app. Yup, my Bluetooth switches off because of the app from that big drug store chain caused. I haven’t run into the issue since deleting the Walgreens app.
What is it about the Walgreens app that makes this happen? I don’t know but can tell you that it’s not unique to me as demonstrated by these posts on the Samsung Forum. Perhaps it’s unique to my model phone.
Hopefully this article helps anyone who has a problem where their Bluetooth switches off unexpectedly.