[hmbmd]

I have now owned my G05 X5 for 6 weeks. I traded from a 2016 F15. Car drives great. Car looks great. There have been several issues which I will detail in different posts.

This post will compare Apple Car Play vs native iDrive. I have the latest 256GB iPhone XS.

Apple Car Play connects to the BMW via wifi and periodically the connection will drop for 5 to 10 seconds. When this happens, the music stops and then returns in those 5 to 10 seconds. While this is annoying, it is not a very big problem. What is a problem however, if I am on a telephone call, the call will completely drop. It does not just transfer back to the phone and then back to the car again. I just lose the call. This is unacceptable. With Apple Car Play, all track names are transferred appropriately and quickly to the car. No information is lost.

When I listen to music with iDrive, I have the choice of a hard wired connection vs. bluetooth. The hard wired connection is stable and does not drop out. When I connect either way, it takes about 2-3 minutes for my playlists to be recognized by the car. Not all tracks are transferred from the playlists. It seems that Apple created playlists are less likely to be transferred. What is curious however is that the title of the song will appear on the tachometer or home page on the middle display despite the fact there is not title on the playlist itself. If the bluetooth drops while on a phone call, the call will be temporarily transferred to the phone and then back to the car when the connection resumes. I should note that the drop out rate for phone calls is much less often than with Apple Car Play.

With apple car play, you lose access to contacts for navigation. The work around is to select a contact in Apple Car Play phone app and then select the address which will open Apple Maps. From there there is a choice to transfer this to BMW navigation. You lose contact relationships but that is no big deal. Surprisingly, contact photographs do not appear on calls with Apple Car Play but do appear on calls with iDrive. With iDrive you do not have Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps, podcasts, Spotify, MLB and other iPhone apps.

I don't use the wireless charger for longer than 15 minutes because the phone gets too hot and shuts down. It also activates NFC and one has to swipe up to get to home page or else you cannot use Siri.

For the last few days I am continuing to use Apple Car Play and charge the phone with USB C cable in middle storage compartment. The drop outs and random and I cannot figure out what causes them. The phone call drop out happened twice in 6 weeks. If that continues, I will go back to iDrive despite the issues with the tracks not showing up. My F15 using iDrive OS 5 never had issues with playlist tracks and the X3 loner I had recently with iDrive OS 6 also had no problems with playlist tracks.

Of note, when I called BMW Genius the other day, they told me they don't think the issue will be resolved because Apple wants people to use Apple Car Play. (Free for 1st year and then $80 per year after that) Hopefully the connectivity issue will be resolved.