Spotify Cellular Streaming Quality Lower After iPhone/Mobile Plan Upgrade

[Ontario1]

I recently upgraded my iPhone and mobile phone plan and I found that the quality of my Spotify cellular streaming playback in my car has significantly degraded.

Plan

Premium

Country

Canada

Device

Old: iPhone SE (gen 1) (4G/LTE)

New: iPhone SE (gen 3) (5G) 

Operating System

Old: iOS 15

New: iOS 17

My Question or Issue

After upgrading my iPhone to a new 5G model and upgrading my Rogers Mobility plan from a 4G/LTE Share Everything plan to a new Infinite plan with lots of data, when playing Spotify in my car connected via Bluetooth or via USB directly, the quality of the sound seems to be significantly reduced from my older set up.

I used Apple's Quick Start to essentially copy my old phone content to my new phone.

I have Spotify Premium, and confirmed I have all the Settings for highest streaming (very high cellular playback quality, no data saving, cleared cache, etc)

But I am quite convinced my nice car sound system that is usually good via Bluetooth and great when using the USB connection, now sounds more like am radio than the big full sound I am used to.
I am trying to determine why. And trying to correct it.

Could it be a setting in my iPhone (Cellular data is on and 5G is selected)?

Could it be a setting from my Rogers Mobile Streaming Service? (I have lots of data available, and never heard that they may throttle mobile playback rates/quality of audio apps)

Hope it's just not that I am getting old!

Appreciate any insights from the Spotify Community.  

Thanks.

[Vasil · Accepted solution]

Hey @Ontario1,

Thanks for reaching out!

With such a multitude of factors, identifying the cause of this issue might not be an easy task.

What I'd suggest is checking if maybe using a different USB cable would yield different results.

And, in case you still have your old phone with you and it's usable, could you try playing the same song via both devices to verify if there's a difference?

Hoping for the best! We'll be on the lookout for your reply 🙂
 

[Ontario1]

Thanks @Vasil for your insights.

Sorry for the delay in responding, but I did not receive a notification of a reply to my post.

I have continued to monitor the playback performance, and it seems that shortly after I posted my question, the playback seemed to be restored to normal. I am not sure if there was a temporary glitch in the equipment, the settings, the App, the mobile network or in the listener, but things now appear to be as they should be again.

Thank you again for your help.

[Eni]

Hey @Ontario1, 

Thanks for getting back to us and letting us know. 

Great news! Give us a shout if it starts misbehaving again, we'll be happy to help.

Cheers!