Dexcom G5: signal loss with iphone but not receiver

Ok I thought you meant you paired the iPhone to the receiver (like the G4 does)… which would give me a much stronger connecrion if it could be done

That could be, it did seem to have better connection earlier on… and the previous sensor really never connected to the phone well at all… although both that one and this one still communicate well with the receiver, which is confusing…

He miswrote his earlier post. He pairs his iphone to the transmitter, not the receiver.

As you know, you can keep both the receiver and the phone paired to the transmitter simultaneoulsy.

Are you saying that you are able to get a good signal to the receiver while the iphone signal sucks? Is that correct?

Yes the receiver works flawlessly and the iPhone connection sucks

Corrected. Thx! I still get all these things confused sometimes…

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That’s what Dexcom told me would happen. I see it at soccer games when the receiver works while the phone doesn’t. But I hardly ever see it in service drops because I swap the sensor before that :frowning: I typically swap at 2 weeks.

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As mentioned by others I have pretty much no connection issues with my iPhone. I haven’t used a receiver since the iPhone compatibility was introduced.

In the past 2 weeks, we have had issues with signal loss. However, this has been solved by simply restarting the phone.

I just don’t understand why it would matter? The transmitter is either adequately broadcasting meaningful data or it’s not it would seem— why would one receiver of that broadcasted data care if the sensor is old but not the other?

Sam, that is the $1,000,000 question. We have been using the Dexcom daily since October, and our experience matches the above mentioned. The receiver is almost always locked on, but the phone has dropouts. If we reset the phone every 12 hours they match most of the time. But it is clear, that the receiver can pick up the signal better than the phone in our case.

Since we started resetting the phone, we have mostly eliminated the issue, but it still happens occasionally.

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@Chris @Sam From my understanding it is a slight variation with the iPhone (and most other phones) Bluetooth stack. The ones that handle BLE handle that signal all slightly differently. The BLE in the Dexcom receiver is single purpose.

Well, we had our first random signal loss for no reason this morning.

I think he briefly went out of range but then it was frozen in “signal loss” for 2 hours. It took two reboots and now all of a sudden Dexcom app has decided to work again. It’s definitely not a signal range issue as his phone sits in a little undershirt on his back.
Anyways, I guess this is a real phenomenon. Good to know that the solution to everything (a.k.a. the hard reboot) seems to work for this glitch too!

it did pick up the missing readings, just fine! What a strange error.

My iPhone pretty rarely gets the signal loss, but I think it’s been happening a little more since I’ve had a bunch of iPads also around, which makes me wonder if it could be due to lots of bluetooth stuff happening in the area? Either way, I find that some combo of rebooting the Dexcom app (not the phone) and shutting on and off the bluetooth (I think I usually turn off the app, turn off the bluetooth, wait a sec, turn on the bluetooth, wait a sec, restart the app) seems to do it.

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Also making sure old transmitters are cleared off the bluetooth memory on the phone is key. You should only have one in there that matches your current transmitter. I’ve sometimes found that if I’ve relatively recently changed my transmitter and start having problems (weirdly enough, not necessarily right after I change it, but maybe toward the end of that first sensor on the new transmitter), that that’s the culprit.

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I don’t know if this is how it works on the iPhone, but on Android you can prioritize Bluetooth connection. So my transmitter always occupies the first position.

That being said, my phone model, Samsung note 4, has a hard time maintaining the connection with xDrip+, so I use my watch as the receiver.

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I use Dexcom one and also have issues with daily “signal loss” errors on the iPhone. Have had to turn off alerts!