It worked, dandy!
I'm loving MINI Connected soooo much now. Everything works. Also, voice control does the job, which didn't work quite well in my previous MCS without this feature. It's true you need to be very specific about what you request, but most things including giving instructions to the navigator work well.

 

I'm with you William. I've been digging into MINI Connected in the two days I've had the car and it's great. I finally got the iPad working with it. I needed to connect, then run the app. When I had the app already running and just connected it, the car wouldn't see it properly.

Today on the way to work I retweeted something in traffic while listening to Satellite radio. Cool stuff.

 

Kurtster don´t tweet and drive!

 

I just had to upgrade today, because I dropped and broke my iPhone 4.

What do you have to do to get the iPhone 5 to work on the mini? I hooked up the Y cable that was working fine with my iPhone 4, using a 30 ping to Lightning converter, that didn't work.

I then use the lighting to usb to see if the mini would see the phone, and that didn't work.

Any ideas?

 

You shouldn't have any problems with using the 30 pin to Lightning converter and the Y-cable. When I bought my new iPhone 5 with iOS 6 connected through the new Lightning connector I didn't experience any issues syncing to my stereo in the previous MCS (no MINI connected). This was back in November 2012.

Now that I have the same iPhone 5 with the most recent update (6.0.2) and a new MCS with MINI Connected, all goes smooth as well, zero issues.

I should say that in the case of the iPhone 5 connected to the regular radio system with Lightning connector has a slower response time, it has some delay when refreshing the screen on the vehicle.

 

thanks william, i am glad to hear that the 5 works with the y cable and the lighting adapter.

Does it charge just fine as well? any loss of connectivity?

 

It charges just fine, no loss of connectivity.

I had read that people had to reset the phone, etc. Hasn't happened to me yet in the two days that I've been driving around. Although every case is unique I think based on platform, device maintenance, etc. So, this is not a general assumption. Your experience could be different from mine and others. Smartphones have glitches in production and so the MINI and its technology, I've seen friends who came with me to the Apple store and bought an iPhone 5 and have had all kind of issues while I haven't had any. So, that is important to keep in mind. Maybe a bad iPhone with a good MINI Connected or vice versa could cause those issues, or two devices that look good in the outside but are not so good in the inside.

On the other hand (I'm just guessing here), I think that every new car lot that comes out of production went through a series of improvements or changes that make your car be different from others that were built in a different time frame or cycle, being the same trim, the same components, etc. Probably it's an iterative process that allows for small improvements in the final product delivered. That causes a specific feature to malfunction when it's put to talk to another device, because some cable or chip from one vendor will perform in a different way than the rest.

For example, iPhones that use retina display built by Samsung will vary from iPhones who also use retina display built by LG. Same product, same features, slight details that an average consumer won't notice or know, only the geeky ones. Same happens with the phone cameras. As a result, a picture of the same object taken with the same iPhone version will look different on each, because the quality and specifications are different.

Anyways, this reply went to long (procrastinating at work ).

Hope you have a great experience with yours.

and BTW, there are two types of 30 pin to Lightning converters, the short and the long one. The short one won't plug very well or at all with some iPhone cases. So, get both and see which one fits better, maybe you can do that at the Apple store or Best Buy or your preferred electronics shop so you don't have to waste money gettig both. I use the iFrogz case and works pretty sweet, no need to remove it, the short one does the job.

 

I would actually like to know if updating to 6.0.2 fixes the issues I am having with my iPhone 5 - I occasionally get disconnected and the only way to have my Mini see it again is with restarting the iPhone. Then it could happen again in 5 minutes or not for days.

But if updating to 6.0.2 clears this up I might be inclined to update...as I was holding off in case a jailbreak surfaces.

 

I'm not sure how soon BMW and Apple are working on a fix for this, I would say not much or little (low priority). If updating to iOS 6.0.2 does the trick that would just be very chancy. My MA told me during the pickup this week that the official fix wouldn't come in less than a year.

If BMW/MINI sends an update to the whole MINI Connected system, I would say, yes! they are doing something about it. Apple alone is not responsible for this, technology partners have to keep up with change. Also, don't forget that this thing now is also compatible with Android and development will need to integrate both OSs. It would be nice to see MINI become more proactive and send regular updates. For example, SONY does a great job with updating the PS3 gaming sstem very very often with the latest and greatest, as to include fixes for Netflix, YouTube, Vudu, etc. and so do the partners themselves (Netflix, Walmart, Amazon, etc).

Just a thought.

Oh MINI, you are lagging behind!

 

Thanks for the info. I will have to fiddle with it some more.

 

I ended up hard rebooting my iPhone 5, and that made it work. Thanks

 

Rebooting as in a quick Reset or as in Restoring?

Sent from my iPhone using NAMotoring

 

I have found that the 6.0.2 release of the phone does not totally fix the disconnect issue: you still need to power off and power back on the phone to have it reconnect once it shuts off.
But playing around yesterday I had the driving force meter running and the phone stayed connected all day, mind you this has never happens with the iphone 5. I hypothesize that the constant communication in this app kept the phone connected and when there is not a constant communication the phone pauses and cannot reconnect.

 

Holding the home button and the powerbutton at the same time. Then when it says to slide to power off, you CONTINUE to hold the two buttons till it shuts down. You don't "slide to power off".

A restore, is a restore from backup, and I did not do that.

While the phone wasn't working correctly, I was using it bluetooth for music, and you know what it worked great with the RDIO app, and I could control my songs via the steering wheel. Also when I turned off the mini, the app would pause, when I got back in the car and started her up, the app would un-pause and start playing music automatically while the phone stayed in my pocket.

 

It works! But, I used the genuine the genuine Apple Adapter Lightning to 30-pin Adapter with Cord--you may also use Apple Lightning to 30-pin Adapter (both have internal electronic parts) AND a functioning genuine MINI Y-Patch (it too has internal electronics) that came with the car.

The service department and I found one genuine MINI Y-Patch Cord to be defective. We switched it out for another and it worked fine.

So, before you give up in frustration make sure you have the genuine Apple Adapter and that the MINI Y-Patch Cord is not defective. Photos of internals shown below

 

My iPhone 5 connected with no problems to my 2013 MINI with the Apple adapter. About 2 days ago it stopped recognizing that I had plugged in my phone. Thanks to this thread, I rebooted my phone and everything is working great.
Thanks!!
Mish

 

Just for an FYI, for those that don't have Bluetooth music in their mini's (my wife doesn't have connected) you can use this cool Bluetooth adapter for 30 pin music devices. No extra power required!

 

So my MA was finally able to give me the proper delivery rundown on my car. He said it cannot charge my iPad. Anyone find a way to make it charge while connected?

While Im at it, my R53 had OEM navigation and I found a hacked firmware update someone made to give it a British voice. Has anyone done this on the latest NAV system?

Sent from my iPad using NAMotoring

 

-

 

I am using the MINI factory ipod/iPhone 30 pin adapter with 1/8' mini plug cord with an Apple lightening/30pin adapter.

The iPhone 5 works acceptably well with a few exceptions:

The plug-in does not work. The screen says "no compatible plug-in device found." A search of the faq's in the MINI connected app reveal that the iPhone 5 and new Nano are not compatable.

Using the iPod function of the iPhone through the car plays music in a shuffle configuration intermitently. I have not found a solution to this problem, though I havent looked to hard.

It seems as though the phone/car connection will disconnect on occasion. No real way of repairing it short of performing the iPhone reset.

__________________________________________________ _____________

Google send to map works great

web radio works well and sounds ok.

Bluetooth phone call quality is very good. no "echo chamber" sound quality has been reported.

the calendar app through MINI Connected works very well. I am pleased with it.

I ordered the car with the Harman/Kardon audio system. I have all music on the phone encoded via Apple Lossless Encoding. The sound qualty is quite good. At idle, the sound is a bit muddy but once in motion,the sound smooths out quite nicely. It is able to achieve quite high spl's without audible distortion or panels rattling. I am overall very pleased.

I cannot report on any other MINI Connected apps because I have not used them yet.

 

Great review. Don't blow the speakers when doing those tests, they do break if you pump up the volume in combination with high bass. Happened to me in my previous MCS with Harman/Kardon.

Sent from my iPhone using NAMotoring

 

Thanks for the warning. I dont want to blow speakers for sure. So far,they've handled all I,ve thrown at them.

 

What software version are you running

 

So with the iPhone 5 there was a changed to the connector out so that it does not currently support video out. This is the mode required to support the plugin function (also known as iPod Out). The video signal goes out the second plug on the standard mini connect cable that looks like and audio jacket. I don't know what apple's plans are to address this. In the meantime, you have to use Bluetooth audio, or the multimedia function to listen to iPhone-based music with the iPhone 5.

 

I'll tell you after getting that function to work on my iPad, it's the worst-performing app available on the MINI Connected system. It's slow, it scrolls the opposite direction of how scrolling works on all the other apps, it's low-resolution and scrolling is sluggish. Not happy with the "plug-in" option at all. I strongly recommend using the Bluetooth audio function to play stuff from the phone.