[Sharltonowl]

I've got a 2017 f32 and when I bought it the dealer said not to bother with Apple Carplay as the bmw system was just as good. Over the past few months I've had all sorts of problems with the bmw system when trying to play music from my iPhone, it just won't find the artists and therefore I can't play any music from the iPhone. Reading about in various forums there seems to be quite a problem for which Bmw doesn't particularly want to do anything, so I signed up for a month trial of carplay for £1 to see what it was like and I must say it's absolutely miles better than the bmw system. My issue is I don't particularly want to have to fork out £295 from Bmw to get the lifetime subscription or any of the annual ones for that matter when their entertainment system isn't fit for purpose. So I suppose my question is, are there any other ways of activating carplay without doing it through Bmw and the connected drive, that's also cheaper?

[Pequin]

I believe there may be an answer on EBay.

[DaveA]

I don't know why BMW don't just add CarPlay, Android Car and the mirror thing you can get for other phones into the infotainment as standard... and include it in the list price... that's what others do...

This subscription system seems to hit the second hand market hardest, I think...

As for iphones, my experience over the years with the bmw system was that the newer your phone model is, the more flakey connections can be... usually sorted by software updates... there was always an issue with mine always launching the first (alphabetically) song which drove me nuts after a while...

If I ever have another BMW I would be tempted to load up the hard drive... Have an SD card in the VW...

[g9icy]

Originally Posted by Sharltonowl

I've got a 2017 f32 and when I bought it the dealer said not to bother with Apple Carplay as the bmw system was just as good. Over the past few months I've had all sorts of problems with the bmw system when trying to play music from my iPhone, it just won't find the artists and therefore I can't play any music from the iPhone. Reading about in various forums there seems to be quite a problem for which Bmw doesn't particularly want to do anything, so I signed up for a month trial of carplay for £1 to see what it was like and I must say it's absolutely miles better than the bmw system. My issue is I don't particularly want to have to fork out £295 from Bmw to get the lifetime subscription or any of the annual ones for that matter when their entertainment system isn't fit for purpose. So I suppose my question is, are there any other ways of activating carplay without doing it through Bmw and the connected drive, that's also cheaper?

I'm curious to know more about the issues you're having. My car's (mostly) fine with my iPhone 6s. It often forgets what song I was last playing between trips, but think that's down to my phone not the car.

I use siri voice control 100% of the time and it seems fine.