BMW ConnectedDrive Review – the apps

The rise of apps, thank primarily to Apple and its smartphones, such as the iPhone 5S, is something that BMW has clearly taken notice of, as its improved ConnectedDrive shows.

As the name suggests, ConnectedDrive is a BMW system that integrates in-car entertainment, navigation and information with apps that talk to the car via its built-in 3G SIM. The result, is a system that gives you more control over your car no matter where you are. Here we’re looking at the remote apps, to see what they have to offer.

CONNECTEDDRIVE APPS

Available for iPhone and Android, My BMW Remote is the app that lets you access your car over the internet. To use it, you first have to register your car online through the online portal and enable remote services. This involves setting up a set of security questions, which are used if you have to phone BMW. However, the website is a little clunky and it took us a few attempts to get through the system and have the option to turn on Remote Services. Your choice of browser makes a difference with Google Chrome not supported and Internet Explorer giving the best result.

Fortunately, once you’ve configured your services, there’s little reason to use the website and control moves to your smartphone. Our BMW X3 came with the majority of services enabled, although it depends on the model you buy as to what you can do.

VEHICLE POSITION

Losing your car is something that you don’t need to worry about with Vehicle Position, which uses the car’s built-in GPS to send its location to your app. Your car’s then shown on Google Maps, with a walking route automatically plotted from your current location. It takes around a minute or so for the car to report its location back to you.

Never lose your car again, thanks to Vehicle Position

For privacy reasons, if the car is more than 1.5km away from your current location, the app refuses to show you its location. BMW, however, can access the car’s location should it be stolen. It’s a brilliantly simple tool and perfect for those times when you park in a strange city and can’t quite remember which road you left your car on.

If your car’s out of range, the privacy settings kick in

CONTROL

While Vehicle position is a passive tool that shows you where your car is, My BMW Remote also has Control tools, which let you access features of your car remotely. Not all of these features are available on every model.

FLASH HEADLIGHTS / REMOTE HORN

While Vehicle Position will tell you where your car is, if you’ve left it in a car park, you may still have trouble finding it. That is, unless you have Light Flash. Using this feature you can, as it sounds, flash your car’s headlights to alert you to its location.

As with all the remote services, this takes a few minutes to activate. Of all the services, this is the one that’s least likely to be used day-to-day, as Vehicle Position is typically good enough on its own.

Your car may also report that it supports Remote Horn, but this feature has been disabled in the UK and there’s no way to activate it. It would be better if BMW disabled the listing of this feature, so as to avoid confusion.

You can flash your car’s headlights to make it easier to find

LOCKING/UNLOCKING

How many times have you walked away from your car and then wondered if you really locked it? Or, how many times have you gone back to the car by yourself to find that your partner has the keys? With Locking/Unlocking, neither of these issues is a problem.

Just select the option and use the slider to either lock or unlock your car. The control signal takes a good minute or so to go through, but it means that you don’t have to run back to your car to check it’s locked or stand to long in the rain while you’re waiting for someone with the keys to turn up. It also means that it’s no longer a problem if you lock your keys in your car, as you can just unlock it again.

Never again do you have to worry if you’ve locked your car, as you can send the lock signal from your app

It’s a staggeringly brilliant system and something that should be available on more cars. If you haven’t got the app installed, you can call BMW directly and get them to unlock your car remotely. This is perfect if you’ve managed to lock your phone inside the car, too.

PRECONDITION

Precondition lets you set timers for the car’s fans. The idea is that you can wake your car up and have it cool down or warm up before you get in it. It’s a great idea, although EU laws mean that the car’s engine can’t be started, which means the air-conditioning system doesn’t turn on.

EU law means you can’t set a temperature or turn the air-con on, but you can still pump in fresh air before you get to your car

All you get now, then, are the car’s fans pumping in air from outside. It can be useful on a hot day to pump some fresh air into the car, but the system feels a little hampered. Our car could have two timers set, which can be modified and adjusted in-car, too.

GOOGLE LOCAL SEARCH

Without a doubt this is the most brilliant feature of ConnectedDrive and My BMW Remote. It gives you Google Maps, which you can search and use in the same way as the default Android and iPhone apps, but when you’ve got your location, you can just tap Send to vehicle.

Google Local Search is much more powerful than any in-car address lookup

When you get in your car, your new location appears in Messages, and you can use iDrive to add it to the car’s navigation system. What this means in practice is that you can use the full brilliance of Google Maps to plan out your locations and have them all sat in the car waiting when you get in.

Sending locations from your phone to your car makes using the satnav even easier

While the car’s own navigation system is good, giving you full postcode lookups and Google Local Search, using your smartphone first is so much easier. This is definitely the feature we use the most and highlights the brilliance of integrating your phone with your car.

BMW CONNECTEDDRIVE APPS CONCLUSION

While some of the features are of limited use and the website a bit clunky, once you’ve got Remote Services enabled, the system is brilliant. Being able to find your car, lock or unlock it, and send locations to it from anywhere using Google Maps is brilliant. This is definitely the route that more car manufacturers should take.