I recently tried to connect my iPhone to the built in bluetooth on a Range Rover Sport and whilst the phone could see the car’s bluetooth and start pairing I was being prompted for a PIN number which I didn’t know.
On iDrive equipped BMW’s you pick your own code to enter on the phone, say 1234 and then the car asks you to confirm this code on the iDrive.
On much older Nokia car kits the code was written on a sticker on the hardware so you had to make note of it but all the recent Nokia kits just use 0000 as the code.
I tried 1234, 0000 and some other defaults to connect my phone to the Range Rover Bluetooth and it didn’t accept them. I have since discovered (in the manual but obviously couldn’t check this easily) that the bluetooth PIN for all Range Rovers and Land Rovers is 2121.
[This blog entry is merely a reminder for me of the PIN for the future but it may come in useful to others]
UPDATE [21st Nov 2008] – Apple have released iPhone 2.2 software update which appears to fix all known issues with BMW bluetooth and iPhones. If you had no contacts syncing or bluetooth kept dropping the connection every 20 or 30 seconds then update to 2.2 and you should find it’s all fixed.
UPDATE – Sorry guys and girls, it looks like a was a little premature on this one. My contacts DID all show up on the iDrive screen and I scrolled through, jumped from A-N-W-etc and I came in to get the camera for a few shots for this article. When I went back out, my iPhone paired but after a long wait screen there were NO contacts shown! I removed both pairings, powered off the car and the iPhone and tried again but still nothing. I then updated my friends brand new 3G to 2.02 and tried syncing that (which has never been seen by the car before) and it paired but still no contact sync.
UPDATE – *FIXED* – It appears we’ve found a fix that will get all your contacts showing up on the iDrive again. You simply need to add 2000 fake contacts to your iPhone. There are detailed instructions, vCard/CSV files available to download and step by step screen shots in a new post here – Fix for Fix for iPhone and BMW iDrive address book not synchronising.
UPDATE (18th August 2008): There’s a FIX!
Looks like we’ve found a fix for this that involves creating a large number of fake contacts on your iPhone. Mine started working when I sync’d with my Exchange server and 2500 new contacts appeared on my iPhone and at the time of writing this 3 out of 3 people who tried the fix have reported back with success. Click below to jump to the relevant place in the comments and read a few above it from Vants and Rajesh too for more info:
UPDATE (18th August 2008): ****FIXED*********NOT FIXED***** Apple have just released iPhone 2.02 update and I’m currently downloading it. Hopeful that this update will finally fix all the iDrive address book issues, watch this space…..I’ve just got back from testing 2.02 with my iDrive and finally, it’s working again! (iPhone 2.02 fixes BMW iDrive contact syncing)Sorry guys and girls, it looks like a was a little premature on this one. My contacts DID all show up on the iDrive screen and I scrolled through, jumped from A-N-W-etc and I came in to get the camera for a few shots for this article. When I went back out, my iPhone paired but after a long wait screen there were NO contacts shown! I removed both pairings, powered off the car and the iPhone and tried again but still nothing. I then updated my friends brand new 3G to 2.02 and tried syncing that (which has never been seen by the car before) and it paired but still no contact sync.