[xDrive50i]

I think on average, the car 'sees' 9 GPS satellites. It tells you how many it currently sees in the diagnostic screen in the iDrive system.

I don't think that the satellite signal acquisition takes that long as the system needs to load the data after it has acquired the position and if you listen and watch closely, it is the loading of the data that takes so frigging long. Sometimes, you can actually watch the system load bits and pieces of the map data and display it part by part on the screen. Often enough I have seen the screen come up in a pinkish kind of color (why they picked that color as a start up color, I don't know) and then slowly fill in the streets, ponds, etc and street names are usually the last thing they add.