Fydetab Duo bluetooth stuttering/dropouts

Fydetab Duo
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(originally posted on Discord)
On my Fydetab Duo (FydeOS v18.1-SP2) I recurrently experience bluetooth stuttering/dropouts on several connected devices: earbuds or speakers - which I have confirmed to work perfectly fine on my phone or other computers - while viewing/listening to youtube videos in example. This makes it totally unusable for media consumption. Does anyone experience the same issue?

I’m using the native stock FydeOS web browser which is Chromium. My concern here is to understand what is wrong, is it a FydeOS issue or hardware design issue? Or an issue specifically with my unit? I would expect the stock OS/apps to work well with the hardware out of the box.

Not really limited to youtube. I just tested with an online radio stream and also a locally stored video file on the VLC app (Android) and I get the exact same problems:

  1. Multiple/frequent audio cuts/stuttering:
  2. On occasions my speakers or earbuds get disconnected (bluetooth disconnection) following the audio cuts/stuttering and I have to manually reconnect them;

As mentioned, they work perfectly fine on my other computers and phones. This really seems to be an unreliable bluetooth stack/connection system and certainly not related to any online connection buffering.

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We have identified that the issue lies with the chip firmware and will attempt to fix it in V19.

2 Likes
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Ok, so I have recently fully updated my Fydetab Duo to FydeOS v19.0-SP1 and all (hardware) Firmware updates. It seems to have considerably improved the bluetooth stability and performance in most cases. However I can still find stuttering issues and volume control issues on different devices. Where previously I could find significant stuttering issues with all devices and even full disconnections with some, currently I find:

  • :white_check_mark: Redmi Buds 5 Pro bluetooth earbuds - no more issues;
  • :x: AP09 TWS bluetooth earbuds (cheap generic from LIDL) - occasional/random playback stuttering;
  • :white_check_mark: Maginon BTH-4 bluetooth headphones (cheap from ALDI) - no more issues;
  • :x: Prozis Split bluetooth speakers - Mute works but volume control slider doesn’t work (always set 100%);

Please bear in mind that all of the above work perfectly fine with all my other mobile phones, computer laptops/tablets/desktops - with the exception of the FydeTab Duo. So, still some work to be done here! Also with the FydeOS v19.0-SP1 there seem to have been introduced some video decoding color artifacts which I haven’t noticed before - this is very noticeable on the Rammstein - Deutschland (Official Video) youtube video (in example) - but not on all videos. But I’ll open a dedicated thread for it.

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Also tested these:

:warning: I also tried it while on USB-Ethernet hardwired network connection or on Wi-Fi. It’s not an extensive testing so by no means take this for granted but I seem to be unable to replicate the occasional/random playback stuttering issues only if I’m using the hardwired network connection (Wi-Fi turned off). It’s clearly not related to the quality of Wi-Fi connection as the video is well cached in advance. It really seems that the concurrency of the bluetooth connection with the Wi-Fi connection may be the culprit here, as it seems to be interfering with the stability/reliability of the bluetooth connection! Any thoughts? @Archie3 @alpha This is clearly still an issue!