My cable was delivered with my car last September (August 08 build). I don't have it handy, so I can't tell you the part number right now. It's not the latest rev, because my service mgr. had me try a more recent cable, and it didn't work for charging.

What do you mean by 'tagged'? If you mean are the info fields filled in, they are for album, artist, composer, genre, etc. All of my music is classical and jazz.

 

i just bought my 09 MCS a few weeks ago and when my MA was going over my options the MINI did not recognize my 3G iphone, i had the old OS at the time. i brought the mini in and after 3 days of troubleshooting in the service department they traced down some faulty wiring and the parts are of course on backorder. so i have nothing, and it's a brand new car!

 

To fix the 3G power issue I bought one of those Scosche passport doodads... $24.99 over at Amazon. It definitely doesn't work when I'm stationary with engine off... and seems to work intermittently when I'm driving... sometimes shows just the 'plug' icon in the phone (i.e. getting power, but not charging) and sometimes the 'lighning bolt (i.e. charging). I've only had it a day or two... if I get a better read on under which circumstances it works I'll post here.

(oh, and my OS3.0 seems to work fine with the mini AUX... but I certainly don't have a gazillion tracks).

 

Well, I have reduced my songs on my iPhone to about 2400. That works just fine with the Mini setup and allows me a couple of hundred song expansion capability. It sucks, but in any collection, there is stuff that you never listen to, so it wasn't too hard.

I am still interested in finding out the following:

I want to know if anyone has an iPhone 3G with the Mini Media Connect (audio / bluetooth / Y-cable) and O.S. 3.0 loaded who has:

- more than 2800 unique songs loaded all that have the Title, Artist, Album and cover art attributes completely filled in. You should be capable of setting the iPhone to Shuffle mode and having it display all of the attributes (not cover art obviously) on the radio display.

My guess is that the Mini Media Connect has a buffer for uploading information that is overflowing and crashing the media connect. I suspect that this did not show up before because the size / format of the uploaded information has changed with O.S. 3.0. I also suspect that you would only see this problem in a case like mine (large number of songs with all the attribute information in-place).

Other than that, I will just have to live with it, I suppose.

 

I have over 3k unique and tagged songs on my iPhone 3G w/ 3.0.

Immediately after update, it wouldn't work with the MINI Y cable or snapin. I restored it a few times, and same thing.

I restored it one last time, as a new phone and ignoring my backup, and it worked. Unfortunately, it only worked 2-3 times and now its back to not working again. :(

Don't know what the deal is, but I've had consistent results in both my 09 MCS w/ nav and my 09 Clubman w/o nav loaner.

 

When I upgraded to the 3G iPhone from the 2G my y-cable worked for about a week and then the car did not recognize my phone. Took car to Desert Mini/Las Vegas and explained the situation to my MA. He swapped out the cable for the same exact part number and the car would allow me to play and control my iPhone through the cable. That was about 5 months ago. Still works.

But no charging.

 

Greetings all, I am new to this forum and I am about to place my order for a new Cooper S. I was looking into the bluetooth Y adapter for my ipod touch (2g with 3.0 update) and figured I would search this forum to see how people liked it. I am a bit disappointed by what I am reading.

Has anyone successfully connected the ipod to their mini using the new ipod bluetooth switch?

I think this is one of the things that I will ask my dealer to show me when I go to order the car.

 

vandelay: it seems to be a numbers game. People having trouble with the Media-Connect appear to be people with many songs (2000+) that also have all of the tag information filled out for those songs (title, album, artist). This is not exactly the same as absolute song volume (i.e. 12GB) of music. Best guess is that all of the tag information that gets uploaded by the Mini for display on the radio face overflows some buffer in the Media-Connect.

 

Take your iPod or iPhone and have them connect it to a car with the USB option.

 

Hey I also have Mini Cooper 2009 where the y-cable worked fine with my 3G but now will not charge my 3GS---Did you get any resolution for this? What exactly is the "3G" cradle that works with the 3GS?

 

No resolution yet on the Y-cable. I can play stuff from the iPhone, but it will not charge it.

The cradle I'm referring to is the one that fits in the armrest for charging your iPhone if you have the bluetooth integration. The part number depends on whether you have smartphone prep or not.

 

There's an updated armrest snap-in for the iPhone 3G that has been working for the 3GS- there's two different versions:

With No Smartphone Integration (6NE):
84 21 2 151 038

With Smartphone Integration (6NF):
84 21 2 151 043

 

I have the 038 cradle. It works fine with my iPhone 3GS. Now if they would just fix the damn Y-cable.

 

The Y cable seems to be working fine in my 09 JCWs. It displays and lets me control my tunes in the Nav display and the charge symbol is showing on the iPhone. I have the new 3Gs iPhone

 

I have the 3G-compatible Y-cable, and I notice that my iPhone 3GS often (maybe 90% of the time) says that charging is not supported. But... it will charge very slowly -- it will gain maybe 2-3% charge over my hour commute (with music playing, bluetooth connected, and 3G enabled).

The other maybe 10% of the time, when the phone doesn't complain about charging and the lightning bolt shows in the battery indicator, the phone will complain about lack of charging eventually (anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes later), but in the mean time it does appear to charge the phone at a faster rate.

Long story short: with my 3GS plugged in with the Y-cable of my 09 MCS, I've never arrived at my destination with less charge than I started out with... that's not to say it charges anything noticeable, but it is something.

 

I have a Clubman S that I bought a week after launch in 2008 and so I guess you could say I have a 1st gen Y adapter. My adapter has a stamped part number of "0 440 796". I used to have a iPhone 2G that worked perfectly but I sold it a week before OS 3.0 came out and so I cannot verify if it would have worked with the new OS.

I currently have a 16GB 3GS and all of the functions work EXCEPT the charging. I have not used it since getting the message about no charging since I use the XM Radio app and it would burn up my battery in a a few hours. I am going to try and drop into the dealership and see if the new Y cables have a different part # and try that out.

** Something else I noticed, for what its worth, is that when I hook up the Y cable when it is not connected to my car it displays the same "accessory not supported" message. I find this interesting since when I hook up a standard cable not connected to anything I do not get the message. Maybe the problem is with the pin configuration. **

 

As I understand it, Apple decided to have this statement come up any time a cable they didn't approve is plugged into the iphone/ipod. From what I can tell, the statement doesn't mean the cable will or won't work, just that Apple didn't approve it.

 

That makes sense.. but naive as I am in terms of hardware construction.. I found it a bit puzzling since the cables were not connected to a device. I guess there is a chip with an id on the cable somewhere and a registered hardware database on the iphone that checks the id.

My thought was maybe the new iPhone had a different PIN configuration in the connector and that is how it was determined. I will have to drop by the Apple store sometime with the Y connecter and see what they say. Thanks.

 

I'm not sure how they know either. I'm with you in thinking that Apple must put some type of signal into approved cables. I doubt they would change the PIN configuration because I think they would need to work with older devices too.

 

Ok.. stopped in for a "genius" opinion at the Apple store and it looks the the cable is fine in terms of drawing power for a charge. With this opinion I think I am swaying to the belief that not all USB ports are created equal and most likely there is an issue with the Mini's USB port that is not delivering enough power to charge the phone.

I have had experiences with laptops and pulling in self powered devises into my desktop keyboard where the self-powered device does not work because the USB port does not put out enough power. It is my guess that this is the case and therefor as someone mentioned earlier in the thread it will look like Mini will need to make a replacement port to correct the issue.

I hope this is not expensive.. ouch.

In the meantime, maybe one of these aftermarket cradles that fit in the armrest will have a breakthrough and it would be great if bluetooth could take the place of the USB communitcation. I am sure there will be no retro fit to my now monolithic 2008 technology but I can always hope.

Cya,
Malc

 

For what it's worth, people are having the same problem with the DICE Silverline and Silverline Pro systems and iPhone OS 3.0. And like this thread, not everyone has the problem. I think Apple broke something in the 3.0 software and hasn't noticed yet.

 

During my hour+ commute home, my 3G won't hardly charge even a percent when using the Y adapter and either talking or listening to music (screen off). When driving the same hour with a ATT 3g car charger and using it the same way, the phone battery indicator went from "red" (below 20 percent) to full. Something is wrong.

Took it to the dealer tonight and mentioned this issue. It will be interesting to see if I get the same response as everyone else.

Thanks for keeping this going with the updates! Hopefully a solution emerges soon.

 

VanMan,

Just thought you'd want to hear my experience. I have a 3G iphone, with 3.0 OS. Around 3,700 songs (tagged and with artwork). Everything was working fine-> Y-cable, connectivity, etc...

I took my car in on Monday b/c I was having problems with the drivers side window. They had to replace the computer, and reprogram it. As soon as I got in, I had the handshake issue you describe.

It works fine with an ipod nano, my husband's 1st gen iphone and when I remove the usb plug and use aux. mode only. Only problem is with my 3G phone.

I do think you're right that it has something to do with the capacity of the iphone (and I appreciate you sharing your info), but clearly the MINI computer has some part as well. Something has changed since the Feb 08 programming when I bought the car and now.

-mlt08

 

I just found that my Y-Cable will charge my iPhone 3GS if I insert the USB plug into my laptop. It does not charge when connected to the MINI iPod interface. That tells me my problem is not with the cable but the MINI USB port.

 

When I went to the Apple Store Genius Bar.. they tested the Y cable and it powered the 3Gs fine. I think the problem is that the USB plug in the dash does not transfer enough power to recharge the iPhone.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that in my past when I have used self-powered (USB) devices such as external drives, they would not charge if plugged them into a keyboard USB port but only when directly plugged into a computer tower port. I think it is like daisy chaining your cable tv it degrades the signal strength. I think this issue has something to do with Mini's USB port.