Mirak

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Using the above list I've never had the PAAK fail. But, of course, fail is a relative term.
I’m glad PAAK has never failed for you as long as you follow your 17-point checklist. :) But I think that many people could reasonably interpret this thread, and your checklist, as prima facie evidence of a fail.

Anyway, my experience after using PAAK exclusively for over a month: it generally works fine but not as well as the fob. About 1/3 of the time I get a nuisance “no key detected” or “restart now or key is needed“ message that does not impact the driving. About 10% of the time I actually have to punch in my backup code. I can live with that. But it isn’t a perfect sub for the fob. But I do think Ford is going to keep improving this.
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CHeil402

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One additional nuance I've observed (and has some weight based on Ford input) is that phone position also matters. With a fob, it's able to easily determine the "location" of the fob so that if you're standing by the driver's door someone else can't unlock the passenger door (for safety).

With the phone it's using Bluetooth which isn't ideal for positioning information. That's why the future tech will use ultra-wideband (UWB) which provides position information. All that being said, I normally keep my phone in my left pocket and I'm right-handed, so if I stand so my body is between the door and my phone it works less reliably. If I twist so my left pocket is close to the car it works more reliably.

The same works for starting the car. If I leave my phone in my left pocket it rarely works, but if I put it on the charge pad it almost always works. I think Ford needs to make this less sensitive until UWB is more widely adopted.
 

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Ford "removed" my Pixel as PAAK. Keyfob it is.
 

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pdevroede

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I've NEVER relied on PAAK, although I see the car light up whenever I leave the house with my phone. Think I'll give it a shot!

Thanks for the write-up!
 

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Since I excluded fordpass app from the "automatic power control" on my phone PAAK turned from 25% reliable into 99% reliable. That is, I keep my phone in my pocket and the car opens 99% of the time. I do need to put my phone on the phone tray to start the car else 90% of the time it says key not found but once you know that it's just a simple habit to put it there before starting the car.

I'm pretty confident that most issues with paak are because of the phones putting passapp into a sort of sleep state to save battery.

Granted, my battery life went down from 1.5 day to 0.5 day so I cancel PAAK each time. When I walk to the car I open passapp to get PAAK active again. This reduces the battery drain by 80%. The latest fordpass update 3.26 caused a bug where the cancel button(s) are not responding so I have to force close Fordpass for now. I trust Ford to fix this with next update as 3.25 worked like a charm.
 

ChasingCoral

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There's a lot of discussion about the PAAK. Some say it just doesn't work or is not reliable. I say that it just needs to be coaxed into working. To this point I can say that my key fob hasn't left the drawer at home since I got my Mach E in April.

Background: I work in tech. I know that there are many ways to get things to work. I like to tinker and because of that I can get things to work that the rest of my family can't. Actually they could if they were more patient and creative but they know they can just call me for tech support.

Also having been in software development for decades I know that software has bugs. I often tell my staff that any program with more than 3 lines of code in it has bugs, we just haven't encountered them yet. Knowing this allows me to be more tolerant and patient than most.

The PAAK is technology. It requires connectivity between an app on the phone and the car, both of which may be asleep at any time. I'd like walk up to the car with the phone in my pocket the hope is that the two devices wake up and talk to each other then unlock the door. That's the dream. But that doesn't always happen. As a result I have a checklist of ways to get the PAAK to work.

Aside: Ford has a lot of work to do on the FordPass app so that we can avoid all this nonsense. Option 1 should work 100% of the time.

Here's what I do in this order... (Note: My PAAK is a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra)

  1. If I walk up and see the outside lighting turn on I'm golden. I know the door will unlock. I presume this is what we all expect but this happens less than 50% of the time so I can see where people think the PAAK is a failure.

  2. If the above doesn't work I will approach the car and press on the unlock button. Maybe several times. Often I'll hear relays clicking in the car and eventually the circle will glow. This works pretty often.

  3. Next I'll open and unlock my phone. This alone will sometimes cause the two to connect and unlock the car.

  4. Open the app. The app may have been in deep asleep, my phone may have been recently rebooted (in which case the app isn't running) or have been force closed. In that case the two aren't talking at all. Opening the app will cause them to handshake and the car will unlock. Aside: The FordPass app will force close itself at least 2 or 3 times per day. It's the only app on my phone that does this. Ford needs to fix this.

  5. Force close and re-open the app. If #4 doesn't work it may be because the app is in a state that it just won't connect. Force closing it will restart the app and reset it.

  6. Use the keypad on the outside of the driver's door to gain entry. This will wake up the car. Once inside the car the two devices will talk to each other and proceed as normal.

  7. Reboot the phone. This is the extreme measure and I only had to do this once but the car was less than a week old and I didn't know about the items above. I've never had to do this again.

  8. There may be other things that you have done successfully, please comment below..

  9. Caveat: These two devices talk to each other via bluetooth and wifi. There are a lot of other devices that can screw up this communication depending on where you live. I live in a single family dwelling in the suburbs. If you live in a high density housing area you may have more problems..

Using the above list I've never had the PAAK fail. But, of course, fail is a relative term. If your expectation is that #1 should work each and every time then for you the PAAK is a failure to you and you should keep that fob in your pocket or purse all the time. But I'm confident that I can get the PAAK to work 100% of the time, every time without fail.
This is a great writeup and I would say it is a totally accurate description of PaaK with my iPhone 12Pro.

I would say I've had the car work 95% of the time only using 1-4. Except when I spent a day with no cell signal, I've almost never gone past 5. I can't recall ever trying the phone reboot (7). The few times I have to use the keypad (6), the car doesn't recognize the phone once in the car either.
 

woody

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There is no way that anything can be called "it works" if one must jump through hoops to get any kind of usage which is not reliable.
Example: 3.27 "update" today-
downloaded, manually forced from play store as usual.
No difference.
Still no SECURIALERT.
Still listed as a Ford Edge (I believe that was to be corrected last April)
Software updates still say updates set to manual (always was and still is set to automatic in car)
Perhaps someday.......
 

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Helpful tips but there are some PAAK failures that cannot be overcome by just awakening the devices.

My PAAK failure involved the keys being abruptly deleted along with backup codes by server. This cannot be overcome by being tech savvy. So I think I will carry Fob especially when far away from home or late at night.


Ford Mustang Mach-E The nuances of PAAK for the Mach-E C26596A8-7DC7-448D-AF04-A93C507B8E08
 

beymax

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Phone as a key causes more problems than it solves and doesn't work nearly as reliably as the key fob. I also don't like how it drains the phone battery.

I ended up buying a 2nd key fob (for my wife) and paying the dealership to program it. paak problem solved
 

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There's a lot of discussion about the PAAK. Some say it just doesn't work or is not reliable. I say that it just needs to be coaxed into working. To this point I can say that my key fob hasn't left the drawer at home since I got my Mach E in April.

Background: I work in tech. I know that there are many ways to get things to work. I like to tinker and because of that I can get things to work that the rest of my family can't. Actually they could if they were more patient and creative but they know they can just call me for tech support.

Also having been in software development for decades I know that software has bugs. I often tell my staff that any program with more than 3 lines of code in it has bugs, we just haven't encountered them yet. Knowing this allows me to be more tolerant and patient than most.

The PAAK is technology. It requires connectivity between an app on the phone and the car, both of which may be asleep at any time. I'd like walk up to the car with the phone in my pocket the hope is that the two devices wake up and talk to each other then unlock the door. That's the dream. But that doesn't always happen. As a result I have a checklist of ways to get the PAAK to work.

Aside: Ford has a lot of work to do on the FordPass app so that we can avoid all this nonsense. Option 1 should work 100% of the time.

Here's what I do in this order... (Note: My PAAK is a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra)

  1. If I walk up and see the outside lighting turn on I'm golden. I know the door will unlock. I presume this is what we all expect but this happens less than 50% of the time so I can see where people think the PAAK is a failure.

  2. If the above doesn't work I will approach the car and press on the unlock button. Maybe several times. Often I'll hear relays clicking in the car and eventually the circle will glow. This works pretty often.

  3. Next I'll open and unlock my phone. This alone will sometimes cause the two to connect and unlock the car.

  4. Open the app. The app may have been in deep asleep, my phone may have been recently rebooted (in which case the app isn't running) or have been force closed. In that case the two aren't talking at all. Opening the app will cause them to handshake and the car will unlock. Aside: The FordPass app will force close itself at least 2 or 3 times per day. It's the only app on my phone that does this. Ford needs to fix this.

  5. Force close and re-open the app. If #4 doesn't work it may be because the app is in a state that it just won't connect. Force closing it will restart the app and reset it.

  6. Use the keypad on the outside of the driver's door to gain entry. This will wake up the car. Once inside the car the two devices will talk to each other and proceed as normal.

  7. Reboot the phone. This is the extreme measure and I only had to do this once but the car was less than a week old and I didn't know about the items above. I've never had to do this again.

  8. There may be other things that you have done successfully, please comment below..

  9. Caveat: These two devices talk to each other via bluetooth and wifi. There are a lot of other devices that can screw up this communication depending on where you live. I live in a single family dwelling in the suburbs. If you live in a high density housing area you may have more problems..

Using the above list I've never had the PAAK fail. But, of course, fail is a relative term. If your expectation is that #1 should work each and every time then for you the PAAK is a failure to you and you should keep that fob in your pocket or purse all the time. But I'm confident that I can get the PAAK to work 100% of the time, every time without fail.
That is what I call random glitches and that is exactly what most of us do to try to workaround them. The question is how many times is it alert enough to present itself when you just walk up? I hear the "relay" click on the first press and most of the time the second or third open the door. Plug into a 1' usb c and put in on the tray. It is working better than at the start but my mme appears to hibernate not sleep. There is hope with ota and FP updates. Paak works OK right now but it is also too easy to carry a fob. Cut off all wan connections and see if fp boots.
PAAK was working all right for me until I had to uninstall and reinstall last night because it wouldn't register Scotty as being plugged in to the charger. Like other users (I'm running a new generation IPhone SE), I kept the app closed until I needed to use PAAK; slightly annoying when it was pouring rain but I prefer to avoid the battery drain...

Now I still have my backup start code and the app shows my phone as paired with PAAK but the app is trying to say I still need to set up PAAK. Thank God for my one programmed fob. Now to get the second programmed...
Toggle in the mme conductivity off and back on may help if no charging status showing in fordpass @Jscotty. Worked for me.
I have done programming jobs since January 1972 on IBM mainframes, and on the Personal Computer since July 1981, so I know when programs have bugs and only about five of my hundreds of programs have given me problems. But for my cars, I prefer a mechanical key or a passive fob where I Inlcialize the communications ( press the unlock key). If I buy a new car, I will not use my phone as a key since I don't depend or live on it. I tend to travel without one on me.

I may instead use the five digit door code and a future numeric code inside if I didn't have a fob. I find the common practice of doing everything on a phone silly and too dependant. What if you lose it or it fails? I have actually lost my phone one day and found it with a shattered screen a week later, yet I lost very little. Would any of you survive or drive your Mach-E if you lost your phone?

Plan your phone use with a replacement or backup instead. Try living without your phone for a week and see what happens.
I will use both and have the phone up and running. That is redundancy and is not bad logic.
 

67 Stang Convertible

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PAAK works great for me as well and here's my routine.

iPhone XR. I open the app and leave it showing, car wakes up and entry made. No issues if I do this every time. I don't like the phone in my pocket when sitting so this works for me and has become my standard routine with it.

If the phone is in my pocket, it can be spotty. If the app isn't open and showing on the screen it can also be spotty.

Is this how Ford intended for this to work, I don't know ?‍♂ Could there be an improvement here, probably.

I'm happy with at this point tho
Well Damn, I'm really behind the 8 ball. I can't even get the "Key to Download". I've deleted and restored the app as well as deleted the phone from the car's computer and put it back in. It has downloaded the key twice out of many attempts. But it never stays. FRUSTRATED!!!!! Any suggestions from the techies?
 

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Phone as a key causes more problems than it solves and doesn't work nearly as reliably as the key fob. I also don't like how it drains the phone battery.

I ended up buying a 2nd key fob (for my wife) and paying the dealership to program it. paak problem solved
I think this will be the solution for us as well but I still want Ford to pay for it!!! My Wife has already taken over the FOB!
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