Bluetooth/USB Issues
 

Hey everyone! I bought a 2015 CX-5 Grand Touring a month ago from a non-Mazda dealership. It's been going great with the car until today. I always connect my phone to the radio with bluetooth because I like to listen to music while driving. When I connected to bluetooth to play the music on my phone today, I heard more static than the music itself. The radio itself is fine. I realized that the bluetooth connection between the car and phone wasn't good. I know for sure that the bad connection is coming from the car's side because my phone works fine when I connect it to other devices through bluetooth. These are the things I have tried so far:
- Shut off the radio, turn it back on.
- Shut off the car, turned it back on.
- Restarted my phone.
- Disconnect and reconnected bluetooth (for both the phone and car).
- Reset the radio to factory settings.

I was reading online that updating the software in the radio could fix the issue. I downloaded the most recent version of Gracenote and put it on a USB drive. When I plugged it into the car, it gave an error message. It couldn't read the USB drive, even though I saw Gracenote pop up on the screen. I tried another USB drive and still got the same problem. Both drives are set to FAT32. I did some online research and I'm not finding much at this point. There's no Mazda dealership where I live, so I'm not sure what to do about this. Any advice on what else I can try to do? The only thing I feel like I can do for now is to buy an aux cable and hope that works for now. Thanks! :-)

One other thing to try is to have the phone and car forget the bluetooth connection and then repair them. This often fixes problems like this.

I can't give you a definitive answer on the Gracenote update, but some thumb drives have hidden partitions on them that often contain drivers and software specific to that make of drive. This often interferes with proper operation in some vehicles. Make sure your drives don't have those hidden partitions. If they do, use a partition manager to delete them and reformat the drive to one partition only. That may solve your problem. If that isn't the case, your copy of the software may not have been loaded onto the USB drive properly or it might have become corrupted during the download or copy process.

I know this won't solve your issue, but I simply use a USB cable.
It gives me a solid connection with better sound quality than Bluetooth.

I did purchase an aux cable online yesterday, so I should get that soon. I honestly don't mind doing it that way, it's probably easier to deal with, like you said. As long as I can connect my phone to the radio, I don't care how it's done. Thanks!

Thank you for the advice! I looked into the possible multiple partitions and only found one for each USB drive I used. I tried re-downloading the Gracenote update and the car still doesn't recognized it. I also tried forgetting the bluetooth connection for the phone and car, with no luck. I'm wondering if something needs replaced?

Thanks for correcting me, it indeed is an "AUX" stereo sound cable not USB.
I also use an old Samsung phone as strictly a music player.
Being on call 24/7 for the last 16 years before I retired, I only carry an emergency flip phone in my vehicle.
My wife's phone(s) have never had an issue connecting in the CX-5, for phone use anyway.