The metro is to Bluetooth roughly what a microwave oven is to a WiFi signal. Dozens of people crammed into a metal tube, every single one with a phone in their pocket screaming Bluetooth at full blast, surrounded by steel structures bouncing the signal around like a ping pong ball. No wonder your earbuds cut out.
You're not alone with this. It's the most common Bluetooth issue we hear about – and it's usually not the earbuds' fault. It's the environment.
Why is the metro Bluetooth's worst nightmare?
Bluetooth operates on the 2.4 GHz frequency. So does practically everything else: WiFi, other people's earbuds, smartwatches, and that one guy's mysterious device that nobody can identify. On the metro, this frequency band gets seriously congested.
On top of that, the metal body of the metro carriage reflects signals all over the place. The Bluetooth chip tries to interpret the original signal and its ten reflections simultaneously. The result is stuttering.
Sometimes the problem is also related to an app on your phone. One of our customers traced the issue to the Spotify app running minimised – it was dropping the connection and reconnecting in the background. So the culprit isn't always Bluetooth itself, but what your phone is doing to the signal.
How to fix it
Try these in order:
- Remove the pairing completely and reconnect. Go to your phone's Bluetooth settings, forget the earbuds, and pair them from scratch. This fixes a surprising number of problems.
- Keep your phone on the same side as your earbuds. If your phone is in your left pocket and the signal has to travel through your body to reach the right earbud, that's a longer journey than you'd think. Try keeping your phone in a breast pocket or closer to your head.
- Check that your phone isn't connected to other Bluetooth devices. A smartwatch, car stereo, or that old speaker at home – they're all competing for the connection.
- Close background apps. Especially Spotify and other music apps – close them completely and reopen them. Sometimes an app gets stuck in the background and messes with the connection.
- Update your phone's operating system and app versions. Bluetooth stack bugs are surprisingly common, and updates fix them regularly.
- Try turning off the multipoint setting. If your earbuds are trying to maintain a connection to two devices at the same time in a crowded environment, that's just adding fuel to the fire.
If nothing helps
If the stuttering continues even in a calm environment – like on your sofa at home without a hundred other people's Bluetooth interference – it might be an actual fault. In that case, drop us a message at info@valco.fi. Include your order number, phone model, and a description of the situations where the stuttering happens.
Our service team in Kajaani can test the device and repair it if needed. We fix headphones here – we don't chuck them in the bin.
But in all honesty: if the problem only happens on the metro during rush hour, it's probably that metal human tube and not your earbuds. Bluetooth simply wasn't designed for a situation where a hundred devices are fighting over the same frequency band inside a steel pipe. Then again, that's a pretty good reason to build the Death Star – the reception would probably be better in there.
