iPhone 8 and X make it possible: you can finally charge your iPhone wirelessly in the BMW. This option is particularly exciting in conjunction with wireless CarPlay, as offered by BMW in its vehicles.
Simply place your iPhone 8 or X (with Bluetooth and WLAN switched on) after getting into the Qi charging recess below the dashboard and drive off. After a few seconds, the BMW infotainment system ConnectedDrive will be connected to your iPhone 8 or X and you can charge the iPhone battery while using Carplay.
Our test shows: After almost two hours of charging, the battery level of our iPhone 8 rose from 19 to 91 percent.
CarPlay remembers the last song that the iPhone played when the car was switched off. When you start the car again, Carplay will play the finished song exactly where it left off.
The navigation of the BMW navigation system interrupts the playback of Apple Music on CarPlay if a new, faster route is available and ConnectedDrive informs the driver of this. If the driver accepts the new route, CarPlay starts playing the interrupted music again after a few seconds.
You can easily start a call from the Carplay via Siri to a contact stored in the smartphone’s address book. These calls are then made via Carplay and not via the ConnectedDrive telephony function.
Sometimes there is a problem: The Apple Music song list on the main screen does not scroll any further when you have reached the lower end of the visible part of the displayed song list and now start the next song with the steering wheel button. So you can’t see the name of the new song you have just selected on the control display. Only when the driver manually scrolls through the song list on the control display will he see the name of the next song title.
