Phone As A Key Performance

[howler99]

I've got the Android Location permissions setting "Allow only while using the app".

I can hear it lock and unlock when I'm walking around the house. When I'm out, sometimes it unlocks when I'm 100 feet or so away. Sometimes I have to take my phone out and wave it round the door before it unlocks.

Phone is a Pixel 6 Pro.

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[Taco Corp]

I've had maybe a 30% success rate with the truck unlocking/locking it's self with the phone key when I want it to, and probably closer to 60% when I don't. Last night I was taking a bike off the back of the truck and the doors decided to lock for some reason.

Once thing I found that works pretty well is just holding the phone up a few inches away from the door handle to unlock. But that's annoying so I end up using the fob most of the time to make sure it actually locks.

Wish that Rivian would focus on the app some more, adding a widget option for lock/unlock would be nice, or enable a shortcut for siri to do the same.

 

[trez63]

I have noticed one thing that doesn't really make much sense. My gym is in an area that has horrible cell reception. Especially data. When I'm at the gym it takes me sometimes more than a minute to get the truck unlocked. That makes no sense because it's supposed to use Bluetooth but this has been my experience now 3-4 times a week for 3 months. What's even crazier is, in that same parking lot, even the key fob has a hard time waking up the truck. So somehow, a bad data connection can prevent all kinds of access to the truck. I know it makes no sense, but it's not something that has happened once or twice. It's very consistent.

 

[Sean]

Besides location permissions you need to check the battery settings for the app itself. At least on Android it will be default set to optimized which means that the phone will limit it's check-ins/call outs and greatly impacts walk up performance. If you are having issues you might want to change it to unrestricted and see how well it works.

 

[DJG]

I've got the Android Location permissions setting "Allow only while using the app".

I can hear it lock and unlock when I'm walking around the house. When I'm out, sometimes it unlocks when I'm 100 feet or so away. Sometimes I have to take my phone out and wave it round the door before it unlocks.

Phone is a Pixel 6 Pro.

You should definitely change the setting in the vehicle so that proximity lock/unlock is disabled at home. Will save you battery both in your phone and vehicle, and eliminate the annoyance.

 

[NY_Rob]

I have noticed one thing that doesn't really make much sense. My gym is in an area that has horrible cell reception. Especially data. When I'm at the gym it takes me sometimes more than a minute to get the truck unlocked. That makes no sense because it's supposed to use Bluetooth but this has been my experience now 3-4 times a week for 3 months. What's even crazier is, in that same parking lot, even the key fob has a hard time waking up the truck. So somehow, a bad data connection can prevent all kinds of access to the truck. I know it makes no sense, but it's not something that has happened once or twice. It's very consistent.

The problems you mention above can be caused by high power radio transmissions near that site.

Back in the day, we used to have a pager (remember those ) transmitter in our building with it's associated transmit antenna on our roof. It just so happened than no one within a block radius of our building could unlock their cars with their FOB unless they held it right up to their windshield and pressed the FOB unlock button.

Pagers are a thing of the past, but we still sell plenty of high power UHF band ( 300 MHz to 3 GHz) radio systems to hospitals, trucking, taxi, farms, contractors, etc..

 

[IRun]

You should definitely change the setting in the vehicle so that proximity lock/unlock is disabled at home. Will save you battery both in your phone and vehicle, and eliminate the annoyance.

Does not change anything for me.
Normal days my phone is at 60% by the time I head to bed. Days when I stay home and the truck is in the garage, i'm usually down below 10%
I have proximity lock/unlock disabled at home location but I still have 1 of the 4 RIVN Bluetooth connections constantly connecting and disconnecting.
My guide says to disable the phone Bluetooth to resolve it and a fix is in the works apparently.

 

[DJG]

Does not change anything for me.
Normal days my phone is at 60% by the time I head to bed. Days when I stay home and the truck is in the garage, i'm usually down below 10%
I have proximity lock/unlock disabled at home location but I still have 1 of the 4 RIVN Bluetooth connections constantly connecting and disconnecting.
My guide says to disable the phone Bluetooth to resolve it and a fix is in the works apparently.

Interesting. Have you noticed that your Home per the vehicle nav/map is actually accurate? I have seen others state that they are off, sometimes because of long driveways, etc. which makes the Home geotag ineffective.

 

[howler99]

You should definitely change the setting in the vehicle so that proximity lock/unlock is disabled at home. Will save you battery both in your phone and vehicle, and eliminate the annoyance.

Actually, I did that, BUT I put my neighbors address in. Don't laugh but I read somewhere you shouldn't put your home address in your car because if someone steals your car, they know where you live.

Maybe it's no longer valid since I keep the fob and home keys separate.

 

[DJG]

Actually, I did that, BUT I put my neighbors address in. Don't laugh but I read somewhere you shouldn't put your home address in your car because if someone steals your car, they know where you live.

Ah, yes. You heard that from my wife.

Well there you go, that's your problem. You'll have to reconcile convenience features with feelings of personal safety. It's a tough world we live in. Although, this could open a whole new and interesting thread around security and how one would/could steal a Rivian (can they?) To me, they (or others like them) are the most secure on the road because it would a) take someone with an advanced computer science degree to steal one and b) it could be bricked with the push of a button if they did.

Finally, I'm not sure I care if the person that steals my car knows where I live, because what does that information give them? I'm still an anonymous person, one of thousands or millions of available houses to rob, only I would be on higher alert than any of the other ones because my car was just stolen. Rivian could wipe the addresses and garage codes with the push of a button too. Simply knowing my address doesn't give them any actionable information or additional motivation.

 

[howler99]

I get it. You have to pick the lesser evil, and in this case I changed it back to my actual address.

Just curious though...does it recognize home as the address in the Nav or is it when it can connect to the Wifi . My vote is it should be the latter.

 

[pfbz]

It’s possible that it’s you waking your phone

I've only had my R1T a few days, and this seems exactly what is happening for me... Locks so far 100% of the time when I walk away (but I have to put a fair bit of distance), but doesn't always unlock.

As soon as I stick my hand in my pocket to grab the phone (and press the volume key to wake it out of habit), I get immediate unlock.

Biggest pain for me is if I'm working in the garage or maybe having a coffee with the truck parked nearby and it locks and unlocks frequently.

There needs to be a way to disable proximity unlock from the PHONE, not just the vehicle. I guess there kind of is now if you just hard-terminate the entire Rivian app.

 

[godfodder0901]

Biggest pain for me is if I'm working in the garage or maybe having a coffee with the truck parked nearby and it locks and unlocks frequently.

There needs to be a way to disable proximity unlock from the PHONE, not just the vehicle. I guess there kind of is now if you just hard-terminate the entire Rivian app.

Or you could just disable proximity lock/unlock while at home in the truck settings...

 

[IRun]

Does not change anything for me.
Normal days my phone is at 60% by the time I head to bed. Days when I stay home and the truck is in the garage, i'm usually down below 10%
I have proximity lock/unlock disabled at home location but I still have 1 of the 4 RIVN Bluetooth connections constantly connecting and disconnecting.
My guide says to disable the phone Bluetooth to resolve it and a fix is in the works apparently.

It is correct, but perhaps worth checking again. Lock/unlock proximity off works but has been acting up lately. Just noticed there is an app update as well.

 

[pfbz]

Or you could just disable proximity lock/unlock while at home in the truck settings...

Except that it gets parked outside at home frequently. And since you kind of have to just 'trust' that proximity lock works, turning it off and on doesn't seem prudent.

And that will do nothing to fix the lock/unlock/lock/unlock behavior if we are at a coffee shop, restaurant, whatever and the truck is parked close by.

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