When I commute to work I spend half my time listening to the radio (NPR only) and the other half streaming music or podcasts from my Samsung phone to my stereo via Bluetooth.  I’ve noticed severe choppiness in the streaming lately, and even though I could tolerate it for a while, it was quite disruptive to my passengers so I finally gave in and searched for a fix.

Conditions

• Pioneer AVIC head unit
• Samsung Galaxy S5
• AT&T LTE connection
• Spotify (music) or Stitcher (podcasts)

The most effective fix I’ve found had to do with Clearing the Phone’s Cache Partition.  I did it yesterday and have had clear, uninterrupted streaming since.  Think of the Cache Partition to be your phone’s Temp Folder which uh … caches files to speed up access in some apps. It’s similar to your PC’s Temp folder. (There’s actually another /data/dalvik-cache directory but that’s too complicated for this post)

Procedure

Short

1. Go to the Android Recovery menu, Wipe Cache Partition, Reboot

Detailed

1. Turn your device off.
2. Press and hold both the Volume Up and Home keys, then press and hold the Power key (so you end up holding all 3 keys)
3. When the device beeps/vibrates release only the Power key
   
4. When you see the Android Device Recovery Menu you can release the other two keys.
5. Use the Volume keys to navigate to Wipe Cache Partition and use Power key to select it.
6. Use the Volume keys to navigate to Reboot system now and use Power key to select it.
7. The device will reboot and you should notice better Bluetooth streaming performance.