Well this forum looks like a graveyard, but I'm willing to give it a try.

I was having a problem, that is all over the internet, where after a few weeks of playing music via USB, you would get a playlist error "Invalid Playlist Format" from Sync. You would have to remove the device and resync with your music app to get Ford Sync to reindex, and then it would work again; until it broke about 2 weeks later. Lather, rinse, repeat. Same thing over and over. Frustrating.

Anyway, I was very excited to see a Sync update available the other week, v4.4. In hindsight, I wish I waited to see how others made out with it, but I upgraded, and I wish I could roll back.

First, the playlist problem still exists, but now I have a slew of other issues I didn't have before, such as:

1. When playing music from a USB thumb drive, music play does not pause while voice controls are in use, so when music resumes, you are not where you left off. You can't hear the music, it just doesn't pause. This works fine for bluetooth streaming however. This was not an issue before v4.4.

2. Bluetooth connection is slower now, and causes some audio to be cut off. For example. Phone is connected via bluetooth. Using Google Maps on the phone, whenever Google Maps announces a direction it establishes a "call" and the phone app comes up on Sync. By the time the connection/call is established, Google, or any other app for that matter, is 1/2 way through it's statement. So instead of hearing "Turn right in 400 feet onto Maple St" you likely hear "feet onto Maple Street". Or if it's a short announcement, you miss it entirely.

3. Disconnecting a Bluetooth call now takes longer than 3 seconds. I'd say you have to hold the phone button 4-5 seconds to end the call now.

4. When Bluetooth streaming from an iPhone running iOS 8.3, you have the option to click "Shuffle" but it does nothing. Would be better if it is not an option.

5. When Bluetooth streaming from an iPhone running ios 8.3, the system displays "pause" then "play" then "pause" and "play" again over and over, directly above the artist name. It's like the system doesn't know what the play status is of the BT device.

6. "Invalid Playlist Format" error still happens with M3U playlists after a while.

7. With incoming texts, all show "unknown" as who they are from and the wrong received date and time information.

8. All of sudden, after having update installed for 2 weeks, it's now telling me my phone doesn't support text messaging over BT, even though it sort of worked the last 2 weeks (see issue 7).

9. And I may be wrong, but I think the voice recognition got worse (this one is less based in fact).

Anyway, for others that have upgraded, are you seeing these issues? Maybe you haven't noticed them, but are? Could you check? I am so pissed. I love technology, and spent a ton of money on this decked out truck, but this stupid stuff is just ruining my experience.

Interested to hear what others are getting out of this.

Thanks all.

[edited 4/8/2015 to add 2 new issues]

 

Did you do a master reset before or after the upgrade? Did you re-pair the phone after the upgrade?

And one other thing about the USB drive - have you tried another (faster) USB drive? Reformat it from scratch, and recopy the songs and playlists onto it?

I had some funky things happen with my MFT/Sync system when I first started using the USB drive. I eventually reformatted it (it was formatted when I bought it), copied everything back onto it, and it's been 100% fine ever since.

Plus, any of the songs have any weird characters in the names?

 

Thanks for replying.

I did a master reset afterward. no improvement. And yes, the phone was repaired.

I am on my second USB drive, now a USB3.0 stick, and no improvement. As for weird characters, I'm not sure. There's over 6000 songs on the stick. It's so intermittent though, it's weird, and I can say it happens with playlists that have songs that don't have any special characters.

These are definitely bugs as far as I can tell, which is why I'm curious if others, running the same version on a Nav/Voice system, are seeing similar issue. It can't just be me.

 

Added more issues found. A disaster this seems to be.