Rear camera failures - a solution?

[taxrebel]

Now I know this is going to sound crazy but bear with me…

I bought a used 2018 Karoq a few years ago. Within months of getting it the rear camera started playing up. It would work for a few weeks then suddenly stop working. I did the ‘infotainment reset’ procedure many times. Sometimes the camera would come back. Sometimes not. Sometimes it would randomly start working for a few days and then pack up again.

Having looked for solutions online it quickly became clear that this was a problem across the VAG range. Not only that, but some owners had managed to persuade dealers to swap the camera out many times without solving the problem. I was pissed but resigned myself to putting up with it for about 18 months…

I then came across a comment from someone suggesting it might be a problem with Android Auto. (I wish I could give the guy credit for this but I can’t find the post.) Anyway, without much hope, I stopped using Android Auto for a while. What do you know?...The flaming camera came back! I continued to avoid connecting my phone to the car for at least 6 months. (God, the in-built satnav is sh1t!) The camera never missed a beat.

As an experiment, and with some trepidation lest I blow it, I decided to see if CarPlay would work. I bought an old iPhone SE2 off eBay for £50. I’ve now been using this with Apple Maps for about 6 months and the camera is still working. In fact, to my surprise, I actually prefer Apple Maps to Google.

The only problem is I don’t want to change my personal phone for an iPhone. So I now keep the iPhone in the car (permanently plugged in) with a cheap Lebara SIM. This works fine, with one exception: if I use CarPlay the car disconnects Bluetooth. So I potentially lose hands-free operation of my Samsung phone. To get round this, I have Bixby enabled on the Samsung. This allows me to ‘shout’ at the Samsung to redirect my calls to the iPhone. I am a pretty happy bunny.

I have no idea why the f**k Android Auto should interfere with the camera but, if anyone is suffering as I did, you might want to experiment with the above.

Incidentally, this was with a Samsung S10e connected to Amundsen MIB1. YMMV

[kodiaq]

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