My partner keeps the Bluetooth antenna of her Android Pixel 4a (5G) on because she wears a Fitbit. On the occasion I want to use Bluetooth (e.g. in my car or via portable speaker), devices will ALWAYS connect to her phone over mine if she’s anywhere nearby. Sometimes it even steals the connection when I was already connected.
Why is this? Is there some way to steal the connection back?
It happened when I had a Pixel 4a (non-5G) and with a Pixel 8a. It’s especially maddening when it’s the audio stream in my car. I believe I’ve tried unpairing both phones, pairing mine first and then hers, and hers still ends up taking priority.
EDIT: Tech Support answers only, please. If I wanted to get trolled there are plenty of other places for that.
Can you buy a second speaker?
I don’t know if there’s a good way to fix this. Bluetooth isn’t secure for things without at least some way to enter/display a pairing PIN, but even so you’re both paired to the same speaker.
We do have other BT speakers, but most of those are cheap. The one I have in mind is relatively expensive so no, I’m not buying another. It’s mine, but it has the best sound quality so I like to let her use it sometimes. I don’t want to make her pair it again every time.
Maybe the car is a better use case. She has her own car, but sometimes she’s the passenger in mine and wants to play a song, you know? Pairing from scratch and then making sure to wipe the connection afterward is a pain. And besides if my phone was paired with the car first, why doesn’t it get priority?