With 401 comments this post is now a little too long so I’m locking down the comments, please leave all comments on the new thread which you can find here:

Fix for iPhone and BMW iDrive address book not synchronising

Scoopz (Admin)

It has worked with my car, I have a 2006(56) 330d msport touring with idrive. If the 2000 contacts have appeared on your contact list as well then I know I’ve managed to do it properly. Thanks to everyone who has come up with this fix, why couldn’t Apple and BMW be that switched on.

@samps – sorry to hear it’s not worked for you, it doesn’t seem like it fixes it for non-iDrive users.

@JoaoFN – Previously you had no contact list BUT it showed the name of the incoming caller!!??? Very strange indeed. Try rebooting the idrive (hold down eject and both eject buttons, unpair your iphone from the iDrive and iPhone menu’s, connect your iPhone to iTunes and change your iPhone’s name (from Joao’s iPhone to Joao iPhone 2 for example) and then force reboot the iPhone (hold down power and home button for 10 seconds). Now go out to the car and try pairing again, when it’s starting to pair keep the iPhone awake by scrolling through the contacts on the iPhone. When the “please wait” disappears from the iDrive mine shows “no contacts available” for about 5 seconds before suddenly popping them all up.

Scoopz (Admin)

Cheers

iPhone 3g, 2.1.

A little thing I noticed was that once an iPhone is paired, it shows the iPhone name which you set in itunes at the bottom left of the iDrive (e.g. Scoopz iPhone). If you change that name in iTunes it does not get updated on the iDrive, so it has cached it somewhere in the iDrive along with what else I do not know. The only way to get the iDrive to update the name displayed was to delete the pairing and then repair.

When I was doing all my testing a few weeks back I would always delete all pairings on the iPhone and car and then change the iPhone name in iTunes to make sure it tried to get a fresh copy of everything off the iPhone. So you may see in some of my screen shots “1stiPhone”, “2nd iPhone”, etc as I simple incremented each time.

Also try doing a CCC (iDrive reset) to see if that changes anything. Press the volume knob in simultaneously with the two eject buttons on the dash (E60’s have 2 eject buttons if you have satnav), the iDrive screen will go blank, it will spit the discs out but keep holding all three buttons for 10 seconds and then it should pull the discs back in and reset the iDrive. Nothing actually get’s wiped information wise, all your presets, etc will still be there. IIRC it just has the same effect as leaving your car powered down for a few hours and completely kills power to the iDrive for a few seconds.

Good luck.

Scoopz (Admin)

Then try pairing up again.

Then travelling to work the phone rings, giving the name of the person calling. I had to accept the call, then talked through the car radio.

How did the car know who was calling when there are no contacts available?

What am i doing wrong ? The contacts fix seems to work with most of you guys ?

for the record:
phone: iPhone 3G ver 2.1
car: 2006 750 with iDrive

At the moment i don’t live in the UK – i live in Germany. My last hope though is the idrive fw update next week..

@Chris – Follow vants suggestion and try and borrow a bluetooth headset and check your iPhone’s bluetooth is not malfunctioning, or try a friend’s iPhone with the car. There are rare cases of iPhone bluetooth modules being at fault. As a last resort (as it takes a while), try restoring your iPhone firmware using iTunes, it should take a backup of all the iPhone settings and restore them back onto it once its done. Have you ever had any joy connecting any phone (Nokia, Sony, etc to your car?).

Scoopz (Admin)

Phone: iPhone 3G software vers 2.1
Car: Oct 2005 M6 iDrive with software vers 27

You guys are brilliant !! Many thanks

Regards the pairing, I personally didn’t even have to repair but would recommend it just to make sure the car tries to get a fresh copy of the contacts off the iPhone. Delete the pairing from the iPhone and from the iDrive/stereo and then repair and wait. Make sure you keep the phone awake when you first repair it, just go to the contacts page and scroll randomly up and down for a few minutes.

Another user reporting success using this method on the m5board.com with an E60 M5

Scoopz (Admin)

do you guys have the contacts in a separate folder ?

1) i del al pairings
2) the pair and wait

or are you doing it in a different way

Thanks so much for finding and reporting this – at last my iPhone and iDrive seem to be synching contacts

iPhone 3G is v2.1

What year/reg was the 320i coupe?

MUN

I’d almost given up hope of ever getting this fixed when v2.1 didn’t offer anythng to resolve it.

Thanks to you all for putting in the effort.

(imported .pst file, synced itunes, re-paired phone and ‘06 330D = contacts list available)

fun thing is that the bmw dealers themselves don’t even know what was changed between the different firmware versions ..

so still poking in the dark

@Chris – that’s a shame, what year/age/model is your car and are you keeping the phone “awake” by scrolling through the contacts list on the iPhone whilst it says please wait on the iDrive screen on first connection?

Scoopz (Admin)

will try idrive fw update

Has any anyone with just a professional radio got their contacts to sync across?

I was Oulton Park race track all yesterday so had no internet access, I checked all the comments last night when I returned but didn’t have chance to reply until now but it looks like vants has been holding the fort answering all the queries and good work putting up the CSV file and PST file.

To those that it has worked for, congratulations, go and spread the word! I have replied directly to the Apple developer bug report I initially filed on this problem stating there appears to be a work-around. They have since replied stating they have passed all the information to the relevant engineers. So fingers crossed this might get bundled into a future update so we can eliminate the 2000 contacts. I would suggest you also submit iPhone feedback stating that creating 2000 fake contacts on the iPhone gets the iDrive address book sync working again, the more they get the more likely they are to take notice.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

@Mike – Hmmm it seems you have another problem going on, which sounds like an issue I used to have when I had my original iPhone running 1.1.2 and 1.1.4, the bluetooth connection would constantly connect, drop, connect, drop. I could get it to settle down by turning off my wi-fi before I got into the car but when 2.0 came out this seemed resolved for me, and I no longer had to turn off wi-fi before getting in the car. I know of a few people who have had the same problem (AlexAlbrecht from Diggnation spoke about it on his video podcast) and he ended up returning the iPhone for a replacement and he concluded the actual bluetooth in that iPhone was at fault. The replacement I believe worked out ok. Do you have access to another iPhone that you could test it with and does that constantly drop the connection?

@J – Glad it worked for you, I think I’ve put more time into researching this than doing my real job recently, but thanks also to Rajesh and vants for putting time into the research and testing. Rather than a public service award you can always click the link in the left bar at the top of the blog to buy me a coffee thirsty work this bug testing for Apple!

I will very shortly be creating a new post detailing the results from the above comments and a summary of how to import all the contacts into OS X and Windows with links to download files, etc with some screenshots and perhaps a video or the correct procedure to re-pair with iDrive as a few have requested. When this post goes live I shall lock down the comments on *this* post and continue with comments on the new post.

Scoopz (Admin)

HOWEVER, having uploaded the 2000 fake contacts to my iPhone, the address book now shows up on the 320i. This is looking hopeful for my M6

Great work fellas.

What i did until now :

Importet vants contact list into a z_contacts folder in outlook 2003.

synced with the iphone

delted pair with bmw

repaird iphone and waited

after a time connections start dropping again

To those that now have the phone syncing up did you never have this connection dropping problem?

Cheers

THANKS!!

My phone never used to drop connection even though the contacts didn’t work – so maybe its your software version on iDrive? I have an Aug 2008 upload which must be fairly recent. Mind, before I bought the car it had the old brown screen (probably original idrive software) and that didn’t seem to drop connection with 3G iphone either.

BMW 5 series 520d June 2006
Iphone 3g 2.1
Exchange server

cheers

Could someone please post a step by step guide to pairing the phone incase I’m doing something wrong

Cheers

Will keep working on it though, and thanks so much for your persistance and find a solution…

it took a good 3-4 minutes for it to sync – maybe you aren’t waiting long enough before fiddling? I nearly gave up too early.

(I used the .pst file, into Outlook, synced in iTunes)