First, let’s see what’s happening on these devices.

Several users experienced various location issues while running Waze as the app sometimes loses the GPS connection. In other words, Waze can no longer determine the user’s whereabouts, which means that the navigation instructions it offers make absolutely no sense.

Then some users claim that the navigation app crashes when the iPhone is locked. This behavior, in particular, seems to suggest a very aggressive battery management system, although, on the other hand, it doesn’t happen to everyone.

The most common issue with Waze on the latest iPhones seems to affect CarPlay. The application does not load correctly, the speedometer is partially off the screen and the saved count is no longer recognized. In this case, Waze is either completely frozen or not loading any registered address. The workaround is to force quit Waze and then relaunch it because for some reason everything works fine on the second attempt.

We can confirm both this issue and the workaround on several car models including the 2020 Porsche Cayenne, 2019 BMW 2 Series and 2018 Suzuki Vitara.

So why isn’t Waze the only one to blame?

There are several reasons why the Google app is not the culprit this time.

First of all, the bugs only appeared after updating to iOS 15 and very often occur on new generation iPhones. Some say they are even worse after updating to iOS 15.2, but in our cases the main iOS 15 update is the one that brought them in.

Then the GPS tracking issue sometimes also occurs in Google Maps with the GPS connection freezing at random times most often when the iPhone is locked.

At this point neither Apple nor Waze have commented on these issues, but we have contacted the iPhone maker and will post an update if a response is provided.