I'm about 3 days into my Mini Cooper S Hardtop F55. Still learning a lot every day.

There are two apps, 3 if you count Mini Journal XL, which I don't have on my Mini, in the Apple Store.

There are two called Mini Connect. Both work. Both work very differently.



The icon on the right, represents Mini Connected Classic, and has the Mini Excitement Apps, G-Force, Temp Gauge etc as well as Streetwise which is pretty cool at showing a map on my screen as well as stats about the Journey afterwards.

There newer one seems less limited, but then allows playing of Pandora and Spotify, among others. I really hope Mini (BMW) brings these two together. It seems all the necessary technology is in place, but one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

This isn't well documented, but others may want to try downloading the apps and connecting your phone via USB then going to Connect to try them out.

 

I'm running the one on the right. I use it every day to play Pandora. My only complaint is when I turn the car off I have to re-open the app when I start up again, even if the phone remained plugged in. Not something I'm going to lose any sleep over though.

 

MINI Connected Classic (and Journeymate XL) will eventually be going away and the new MINI Connected will be used going forward. Both support 3rd party app integration and both seem to support wireless connectivity with the new touchscreen nav units. Sadly, the newer version axed Sport Instruments, MINIMALISM, and Streetwise, though the first two are already mostly present on any 3rd gen MINI with the Excitement Package. I was never sure what the practical purpose was for Streetwise. The new MINI Connected app also adds a share function so that if you do have nav, you can send addresses from Apple Maps/Google Maps to the app and from there, you can import into the navigation in the car, which is nice and works well.

 

Do any of these do anything if I have the base radio and infotainment system? I have a 2015 F56. I find that connecting an iPhone to the USB port works way better than doing it with Android. iPhone has much better integration for playing/controlling music and charges at 1A rate. Thinking about it again, I don't think I ever plugged in an android phone on the USB port directly as I never expected any integration with the fragmented world of Android.

 

Nope. If you have base radio, none of this applies.

Android has unfortunately never had good integration with MINIs....one of the reasons I dumped my S7 to go back to iPhone. The BMW Connected app and iDrive 5/6 DOES work with some 3rd party apps, so I can only assume better support is coming on the MINI side.

Too bad MINI decided to not support Android Auto though...

 

Bummer, the Classic has Streetwise.

While it doesn't give directions, I could see potential for it if driving in an unfamiliar area and one didn't know the streets. (As a map is shown)

But then again, Once I have my Cravenspeed XXL bracket installed, I'll just use my phone for that anyway. ;-)

Thanks for the info!

 

I guess that's why I didn't understand Streetwise - if you need directions, why wouldn't you use your phone? Or navigation if you have it.

Spent some time this week with the new MINI Connected app in the new touchscreen nav. The integration is light years better. If I want to launch Pandora, I no longer need to plug in, launch the app, wait for it to load, wait for it to go into MINI mode. Now you go into your Media menu, select Pandora as the source, done. I tried sending addresses from Apple Maps to the MINI Connected app and it loads that list into the headunit, it can use your phone to send a text message to your contacts on your ETA to a destination from the car, and my favorite feature; you can use your phone's internet connection to search for addresses without relying on the navigation POI database. Search address on headunit via the MINI Connected menu, click start navigation. It's FINALLY working like it should - too bad you need to get the new touchscreen nav to enjoy it though.