[mospantagruel]

Hi

5 days ago i got my first update in the app (i have android)
my x5 g05 left the factory gate in august 2018 , purchased in Germany and i use it in Germany.

app downloaded the update quite fast on my home wifi even though it was 1.5 GB

now app said to go to the car and connect phone to car wifi which i did.
waited for 30 mins - nothing.

came back to the house and read i have to keep my engine running for the update to transfer from phone to car.

ooook...that is the weirdest thing i ever heard of! WTF bmw???
my second car being a tesla model 3 performance, i am used to updates coming in and installing by themselves so....

anyway, i started driving
i drove for 1 hour, it went from preparation 0% to 33%
another hour of driving second day (which is quite hard to justify in this lockdown situation, specially if stopped by police but i took the risk being maniac regarding having the latest software which brought drive recorder- i really wanted that) and it went to 45%
third day i drove 2 hours and it went to 92%

yesterday i drove 30 mins and finally went to 100%.
after that update said 20 mins with car parked.
in reality took 40 mins and i couldnt lock my car during upgrade.

my question to you: is this normal behaviour? do you really have to drive so much for the software to transfer on a WIFI connection from phone to car?

[Xeno]

Here is a related existing thread on a topic that is posted here often and the sub-forum dedicated to software issues:

https://g05.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh...&highlight=ota

[rmorin1249]

One word: Pathetic

[Marty in NY]

Originally Posted by mospantagruel

Hi

5 days ago i got my first update in the app (i have android)
my x5 g05 left the factory gate in august 2018 , purchased in Germany and i use it in Germany.

app downloaded the update quite fast on my home wifi even though it was 1.5 GB

now up said to go to the car and connect phone to car wifi which i did.
waited for 30 mins - nothing.

came back to the house and read i have to keep my engine running for the update to transfer from phone to car.

ooook...that is the weirdest thing i ever heard of! WTF bmw???
my second car being a tesla model 3 performance, i am used to updates coming in and installing by themselves so....

anyway, i started driving
i drove for 1 hour, it went from preparation 0% to 33%
another hour of driving second day (which is quite hard to justify in this lockdown situation, specially if stopped by police but i took the risk being maniac regarding having the latest software which brought drive recorder- i really wanted that) and it went to 45%
third day i drove 2 hours and it went to 92%

yesterday i drove 30 mins and finally went to 100%.
after that update said 20 mins with car parked.
in reality took 40 mins and i couldnt lock my car during upgrade.

my question to you: is this normal behaviour? do you really have to drive so much for the software to transfer on a WIFI connection from phone to car?

When dealers update your software, they like to schedule the car for a couple of days and many here have reported that the upgrade itself can take a few hours for a single pass (which doesn't always work and hence the two day appt). However, having to let your engine run to do the update is the first I've heard of this and is totally unacceptable and actually sounds a bit...well...stupid. I wonder if instead of having the engine running, you can place your car on a battery charger, put it into its On state so all the computers are alive but not start the engine and let it sit that way till the update is complete, like around five hours in your case.

[MystroX5]

Originally Posted by Marty in NY

When dealers update your software, they like to schedule the car for a couple of days and many here have reported that the upgrade itself can take a few hours for a single pass (which doesn't always work and hence the two day appt). However, having to let your engine run to do the update is the first I've heard of this and is totally unacceptable and actually sounds a bit...well...stupid. I wonder if instead of having the engine running, you can place your car on a battery charger, put it into its On state so all the computers are alive but not start the engine and let it sit that way till the update is complete, like around five hours in your case.

Have a charger hooked up should be more than adequate.

[LexxM3]

This experience, obviously a very poor one from the customers' point of view, might explain why remote updates are not rolled out widely yet. Perhaps BMW engineering simply hasn't figured out how to actually do it rationally yet within the constraints of their systems, regardless what marketing had wanted. That's a common problem. A few observations to support that:

- while I haven't done it myself, I've extensively read about those in the coding community whom flash their own bimmers; key requirement is a programming power supply; this is not any kind of a charger, rather this is a super stable power supply able to sustain a very precise voltage (14.3V IIRC) from nothing to 70A loads indefinitely; again, this is NOT just a charger (you can buy them and I scored a great deal on one, but they are from upper $hundreds to low $thousands, depending on the model)

- since it seems that, for whatever legacy design reasons, bimmers require super stable programming power, it may be that engine running is the only practical way to flash the 42 ECUs

- it is unfair to compare an ICE bimmer and a Tesla from an electrical power point of view; Tesla are designed from scratch as a large laptop on wheels, whereas bimmers have a legacy to deal with; Teslas have electrical power galore by definition and even have mains power (with internal battery "backup" :-) at least every night

- this will not help the OP's "being maniac regarding having the latest software" ... 07/2019.70 is BY FAR not the latest available ISTEP for G05; as has been discussed, remote updates will likely ALWAYS lag available latest by a major release cycle, so will typically be 4-6 months lagging; 07/2019.70 was likely released around Oct or Nov 2019, so best case is it is 5 months old and two major releases behind already

[mospantagruel]

Thank you for the replies.

Just to clarify, my post had 2 purposes:
1. to share my experience and my opinion of it
2. to ask if that's normal and if that's the expected behavior

explanation is quite good , from the technical point of view, and it makes perfect sense, since programming some ecu require engine started, just like in some apps like bimmercode or whatever...
i myself am not so technical but i still don't get it: transfer is transfer and applying the update is a different story.
why just the transfer was so slow and required engine started, there are no ecu-s being programmed during transfer from phone to car, right? those are being programmed during the actual upgrade when i had my engine off....

Anyway, i was trying to approach the subject from the customer-who-has-no-technical knowledge point of view, and my opinion on the matter is that its a poor customer experience from multiple points of view: first being the OTA software being so far behind current release, and second of all the transfer requiring so much time from phone to the car (Samsung galaxy note 10+).

was not my specific intent to compare to Tesla, i know its unfair (like life in general), but in the end, if you own both cars and you are not technically inclined, you cannot NOT compare the two, can you?
in the end the free market does not forgive you for this stuff...

anyway, glad to have some replies, thank you for that. I still absolutely love my x5 , just not for the software experience part

Cheers!