Technical Service Bulletin
91 MMI3G/3G+ freezes or crashes and restarts when telephone address book is searched
91 16 28 2036576/4 February 1, 2016. Supersedes Technical Service Bulletin Group 91 number 15-94 dated June
19, 2015 for reasons listed below.
Model(s)

Year

VIN Range

Vehicle-Specific Equipment

All

2009 - 2017

All

MMI3G/3G+

Condition
REVISION HISTORY
Revision

Date

Purpose

4

-

Revised Service (Added information about phone pairing at time of script
execution)

3

10/16/2015

Revised header data (Added all models from 2009 - 2017)
Revised Service (Added instructions for using troubleshooting script)

2

3/6/2015

Revised header data (Corrected Elsa display issue)

When a phone is connected to the vehicle via Bluetooth, one of the following conditions occurs when the user
searches for a contact name in the MMI address book (by using the MMI control knob or the voice recognition
system):
• The MMI screen goes blank then restarts.
• The MMI screen freezes for a few minutes then recovers.
• The vehicle has MMI3G or MMI3G+ system.

© 2016 Audi of America, Inc.

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Audi of America, Inc., its affiliated companies and its licensors. All rights are reserved to make changes at any time without notice. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, nor may these materials be modified or reposted to other sites, without the prior
expressed written permission of the publisher.

Technical Service Bulletin
Technical Background
This condition occurs because special characters (including symbols,
emoticons, or map icons) are stored in the name field of a phonebook
contact (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Special characters stored in
the name field of a phonebook contact.

Production Solution
Not applicable.

Service
1. All phonebook contact fields (first name, last name, company, phone number, etc.) that have been transferred
to the vehicle must be checked. If special characters are stored in any field, they must be removed. For
additional information, see TSB 2026390, 91 Bluetooth - MMI freezes, streaming music skips, or voice
recognition inoperable due to phonebook.
2. Ask the customer to correct the entries in the phone and to also correct the entries in the source information
from which the entries were obtained. If the phone is synchronized with other smartphone apps, with Outlook,
or with Gmail, changing the information only on the phone may not fix the issue permanently.

Note:
Replacement of the MMI main unit or of the telephone control unit will not fix the condition.

© 2016 Audi of America, Inc.

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All rights reserved. Information contained in this document is based on the latest information available at the time of printing and is subject to the copyright and other intellectual property rights of
Audi of America, Inc., its affiliated companies and its licensors. All rights are reserved to make changes at any time without notice. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, nor may these materials be modified or reposted to other sites, without the prior
expressed written permission of the publisher.

Technical Service Bulletin
For vehicles with MMI3G+:
A troubleshooting MMI script is available for download on the ServiceNet website at ServiceNet >> Technician
References >> Audi MMI Scripts >> MMI3G+ Phonebook Troubleshooting Script.
This script will allow the customer or technician to automatically find invalid entries. If no invalid entries are found, it
can be safely assumed the contacts are not the source of the concern, assuming the max limit has not been
reached. The phone does not need to be paired at the time the script is run, unless the MMI has recently been
factory-reset.
To use the script:
• Download the script and extract the three
files to the root directory of the SD
card. The files are labeled “audicc”,
“copie_scr.sh”, and “graphics” (Figure 2).
The script will not work if the files are not
placed in the root directory of the SD card.

Figure 2. Three files required for the script.

• Allow the MMI system to fully initialize (all Telephone menu options will be white, not greyed-out).
• The phone does not need to be paired at the time the script is run, unless the MMI has recently been factoryreset (as long as the phonebook was previously loaded into the MMI). Ensure that the phonebook has been
loaded into the MMI by viewing “Known Bonded Devices” in the Telephone menu and checking for the name of
the phone. If the MMI was recently factory-reset, the phonebook must be downloaded again before the script is
run.
• If the phonebook must be reloaded into the MMI, allow the phonebook transfer to be completed (the phonebook
transfer icon in lower right hand corner of MMI will disappear), which can take up to 5 minutes depending on the
number of contacts and recent call history logs stored in the phone.
• Insert the SD card into one of the MMI main unit SD card slots. Allow the script to execute (30–60 seconds).
• Once the script completes, a green or red popup
message will appear:
• Green indicates that no invalid contacts were
found in the phonebook (Figure 3).
• Red indicates invalid entries were found in the
phonebook (Figure 4). A plain text log file will be
stored on the SD card indicating which contacts
were problematic. The file can be viewed with a
text viewer (such as Notepad, Wordpad, or
Word) on a computer.
Figure 3. No issues were detected with the phonebook
contact entries

© 2016 Audi of America, Inc.

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All rights reserved. Information contained in this document is based on the latest information available at the time of printing and is subject to the copyright and other intellectual property rights of
Audi of America, Inc., its affiliated companies and its licensors. All rights are reserved to make changes at any time without notice. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, nor may these materials be modified or reposted to other sites, without the prior
expressed written permission of the publisher.

Technical Service Bulletin

Figure 4. Specific issues were detected with the
phonebook contact entries

Warranty
This TSB is informational only and not applicable to any Audi warranty.

Additional Information
The following Technical Service Bulletin may be necessary to complete this procedure:
• TSB 2026390: 91 Bluetooth - MMI freezes or voice recognition inoperable due to phone book
All parts and service references provided in this TSB (2036576) are subject to change and/or removal. Always
check with your Parts Department and service manuals for the latest information.

© 2016 Audi of America, Inc.

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All rights reserved. Information contained in this document is based on the latest information available at the time of printing and is subject to the copyright and other intellectual property rights of
Audi of America, Inc., its affiliated companies and its licensors. All rights are reserved to make changes at any time without notice. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, nor may these materials be modified or reposted to other sites, without the prior
expressed written permission of the publisher.