Suggestions for 2012 e70 CarPlay and Larger Screen Upgrade?

[Jon_G]

Hi - I have the stock CIC head unit on a 2012 x5m, and I'm looking for suggestions for CarPlay and screen upgrades. I saw the $649 CarPlay MMI Prime Retrofit for BMW and it seems like a decent option based on the website sales pitch, but I don't know much else about it. As for screens, there seem to be many 10" and even 12" upgrades available online, but none seem to have many reviews. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[CarFan]

Resurrecting an old thread: Last week I paid to have the BimmerTech MMI device installed. I've not had a good experience. I went with BimmerTech because I wanted to be able to have tech support if it was needed. It seems that was a good choice.

The referred installer charged a fairly high fee $299 to install the device. They provided no instructions or assistance at their location even though problems appeared almost immediately. They added that BimmerTech sends them lots of business so they don't refuse to install their products, but they would have preferred that I had contacted the installer directly initially to have them order and install a CARPLAY device and they'd be more service oriented. But since I didn't they didn't have any assistance to offer regarding why the device was operating normally.

Their referred installer was nearly 2 hours away. Upon getting home I tried doing some troubleshooting using online videos. Here's my issue. About 3/4 of the time it doesn't automatically boot up. And getting it to do so manually requires a number of reboots.

The phenomenon is this. You get in the X5 and things looks like they are going operate normally then the screen simply goes black. Its like its about to start but it doesn't. After several reboots you can finally get to the MMI Prime screen. There you can go to the settings screen and manually select and deselect the pair phone and hope after a few more manual reboots the systems turns on AA. If you get out of the vehicle for longer than 20 mins, the freeze and manual re-booting is necessary once again.

I complained to BimmerTech and they gave me some tips and after several days of back and forth they finally told me it was a phone problem -- and therefore there was nothing that they could do. I use an Android operating system. It would be great if in addition to listing VIN on their site they also asked for details about our phones before they sold you their devices since they only work well with a few phones.

In any event, I acquired an Iphone and while it worked initally, within the same day it was doing the same thing as before. It wouldn't start up automatically and it took several re-boots to get it working and you couldn't leave the vehicle for more than about 20 mins before these problems would recur. Now however add that in the middle of a drive it will suddenly stop and the screen will go black.

BimmerTech now says that their device is faulty. At my expense, I can pay an installer to remove the old device and they will send me a new one.

[argento]

You probably didn't have to post three times... If the MFG says it's a bad unit, then I'd go down that path first and get it exchanged. If it persists, then it's a bad install...assuming you didn't get two bad units consecutively. IF you can DIY, then I recommend installing yourself and you will A) Save another install cost B) find out if the installer did a good job or not and C) be able to explain the situation with more detail. IF not a DIYer, then return and cut your losses...else continue the "investment"...

GL

[Caryalon]

The installation is not very complex - maybe remove it yourself?