Is there a way to get my android phone to stop going back to the beginning of a song when I disconnect my bluetooth audio?

Question

I have an Android phone (a Motorola Droid, running android 2.2) that I use with my car's bluetooth audio. When I turn on the car, it will automatically conenct to the Droid and tell it to play, which automatically starts the music app and begins playing. (I like that--that's what I want.) Then when I turn the car off while playing, the music app automatically stops. (I also like that.) But when it stops in response to the car turning off, it goes immediately back to the beginning of the song, which I don't like. I'd like it to pause when the car is turned off, and pick up in the middle of the song where it left off.

I don't even know exactly what's happening behind the scenes to cause this. Is the car sending the phone a "stop" command when it turns off, which causes the phone to go back to the beginning of the track? I'm not sure how to find out. While the car is on, the only commands it supports are "play," "pause," "next," and "previous," which which do what you would expect. I don't see any options available on the phone or on the car that would obviously control this behavior.

So I guess I'd like to know a) if there's a way to change this on the phone, and b) is there a way to tell exactly what commands the car is sending to the phone and when? Some sort of log that can be enabled maybe?

Answer 1

Have you tried using a different music app? You might get better results from say DoubleTwist or WinAmp.

Answer 2

I got curious enough about this that I actually wrote my own little program that captures the "media button" events that are driving this functionality. I was able to determine that the car is doing something that translates into a "MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE" keycode to start the playing. Then when you tell it to play or pause while it's on, it issues another "MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE." But when you turn the car off (or turn off the audio in the car), it issues a "MEDIA_STOP". The music players (both Winamp and the default music app anyway--I didn't try others) respond to the MEDIA_STOP by resetting the song position to the beginning and ceasing to play the music.

So to get what I want, I would have to somehow intercept the stop command and turn it into a "pause" instead. Or somehow get the music apps not reset the song position when they receive as "stop."