Bluetooth pairing problem after Feb 21 Android 11 security update

[givarda44]

Hi fellow community members,

I received the February security update on my Xperia 5 yesterday, and after that I was unable to connect my Bose SoundSport headphones via Bluetooth anymore. Coincidence?

Anyway, the symptoms are:

- Bluetooth on on the phone

- Headphones in pairing mode

- I go into Settings > Device connection > Pair new device

- In the list of "Available devices", I see two entries: "LE-Bose SoundSport" (with a Bluetooth icon) and "Bose SoundSport" (with a headset icon)

- if I tap on "LE-Bose SoundSport", it greys out, shows a "Pairing..." text for a little while, and then the "Pairing..." disappears and "LE-Bose SoundSport" becomes black again - but no pairing, no pop up message etc.

- if I tap on "Bose SoundSport", nothing happens, at all.

I tried pretty much everything I could think of: clear the pairing list from the headphones, reset the headphones, pair via NFC (but my headphone model is old so I don't think it supports NFC pairing), installing some Bluetooth managing apps (which were all pretty useless and full of adverts...), to no avail.

Note that I was able to pair the headphones before to this same Xperia 5, and I can still pair them to other devices, like an iPad or iPhone.

Any help greatly appreciated!

[MarlonUk1]

hello @givarda44 

can you try to boot your device to safe mode? just try long tapping the power off option. then try to re connect your device and the headphone.

does your headphone have its own app? try connecting thru that app. or Download Sony's headphone app on google play

[givarda44]

Thank you, @MarlonUk1 .

Yes, tried both already (safe mode and Bose Connect app) but to no avail. The behaviour in safe mode is exactly the same; through the app, the app identifies the headphones (which I think is the same step as when, through Settings, the Android Bluetooth shows them in the "Available devices" list) but then cannot pair them.

Any other idea?

[MarlonUk1 · Accepted solution]

how about the sony headphones app?

can you check if there is a reset option on your headphone? or an update?

[givarda44]

Thanks @MarlonUk1 !

After installing the Sony Headphones Connect app, I was able to reconnect the Bose SoundSport headphones! I'm not sure what the app did, but it instructed me to go back into the Bluetooth setting and pair them from there (which is something I tried many times before) and this time it worked. I can only assume that the app may have reset some lingering setting somewhere in Android and that did the trick.

Just for completeness, I did reset the headphones before several times and made sure that they were running the latest firmware, so the only thing I did now to solve the problem was just installing and doing the connection procedure through the Sony Headphones Connect app.

Thanks a lot for your support: I've marked your reply as solution and awarded kudos!