iPhone integration with BMW with Business Professional Radio – Problem – Update

So last night as i got out of the car I re-paired my phone to the car.

This morning, whilst driving to work. A miracle happened.

My full telephone list was available on the car – for the first time since I switched to the iPhone.

The car was at the garage because when the key was inserted, the car intermittently locked everything down. I was presented with an orange steering wheel with a padlock on it. Taking the key in and out a few times eventually allowed me to start the car.

So – The garage “reset” the car.

I do not know what specifically this entails, but the radio did loose all its pairings.

So, 2005 330d M Sport with Bus Prof Radio is working, i do have the 2000 dummy entries as suggested by scoopz. Further reading http://blog.scoopz.com/2008/10/11/fix-for-iphone-and-bmw-idrive-address-book-not-synchronising

Fingers crossed it will stay this way. I’ll let you know how it goes after the weekend.

iPhone integration with BMW with Business Professional Radio – Problem

After visiting my local BMW dealer (for another reason – the car was faulty) I decided to enquire on the current situation regarding the iPhone and my car – 2005 330d M sport.

Interestingly, I received a 2008 325d M Sport as a temporary car, it had SatNav+iDrive so I paired my phone.

The address book worked first time.

When picking up my car and enquiring I was told that cars after 2007 should work fine but prior to that there was no guarantee. The iPhone is not on the BMW Bluetooth supported phones list.

I enquired about a Bluetooth upgrade, it was going to cost over £200 and there was no guarantee that it would work. There was also the possibility of other components of the car not working correctly and needing resolving on top of this, which would then potentially increase the costs almost exponentially.

So looks like I’m stuck until I replace my car.

Interesting that 2.2 is out later this week, although given the above, and past reading on the web – I suspect it will not make much difference. Fingers crossed.

Further reading http://blog.scoopz.com/2008/10/11/fix-for-iphone-and-bmw-idrive-address-book-not-synchronising

fix for iPhone BMW Integration address book not syncronising

Scoopz has finally had some success, although not for everybody.

In a new blog entry Scoopz has documented what needs to be done: http://blog.scoopz.com/2008/10/11/fix-for-iphone-and-bmw-idrive-address-book-not-synchronising. It seems to work for many people but not all, it hasn’t worked for me.

In summary, he creates 2000 contacts and add them to the iPhone, this then allows the BMW to synchronise the contacts list.

Hopefully, BMW/Apple will come up with a correct solution soon, my iPhone stability seems to have got worse with the 2.1 firmware release. Although it hasn’t really been useful since purchase.

iPhone BMW Integration

With the release of the iPhone 3G Apple released Version 2.0.0 of their firmware for the phones.

Unfortunately, it appears that in doing this, they broke the Bluetooth software integration with Cars.

The BMW appears to be suffering more than others, but this is not limited to just BMW cars. Some BMW’s do work, but they tend to be just released cars, e.g. March 2008 onwards. But it is not this clear cut.

After many comments to and from Apple/BMW, according to scoopz, it looks like Apple will be releasing another software update in September to resolve this.

Feedback from various people regarding this issue can be found here http://blog.scoopz.com/2008/07/11/iphone-20-update-breaks-bmw-idrive-contactaddress-book-syncing/ if you have this problem, why not add your 2c.

Lets hope this gets fixed sooner than later, maybe they may even address the 3G signal problem at the same time.