Gadgetory

if you watch many of my videos you know it's no secret that BMW is at the top of the stack when it comes to in-car connectivity apps support and basically putting Cee on four wheels let me show you what's new in I Drive four point to the newest version and some other connected technologies that go with it all right now the basic I Drive interface is not changed you recognize this one from the recent couple of years that'll be the same but you're going to see they say much finer rendering thanks to new graphics horsepower they're putting in here more harddrive space things of that nature so evolutionary upgrades on top of that I've told you before but not yet showing you this guy this is the 4G adapter it docks here in a smartphone cradle that is in the console and what this does with a carrier yet-to-be-named by the way so I can't tell you who it is it's got a sim card here you set up an account for this device in particular now it's taking advantage of Shore power in the car to run as well as hooking up to an external Sailor antenna to get better reception in and then it turns that 4g into a hotspot here in the car to power things like your iPad on this pretty slick BMW mount here behind the seat they've also adopted four new apps that are now supported inside of BMWs iDrive system glimpse for location sharing audible for audiobooks Rhapsody a well known subscription music service and tuning which is also a music service but not about music cuts it's about radio stations there's already been web radio in BMWs iDrive system for a few years this will now be a parallel system when you enter the car with tuned in it'll automatically transfer its connectivity and playback into the head unit as you enter the vehicle so a seamless experience with tuning in and out of the car and one last thing coming in I Drive for point two that you'll see in the newer BMWs is the cheaters nightmare the ability to pair two phones at once so you and your wife's phone can be paired at the same time and it merges the phone book so your contacts are all there together in one scroll but you can see where that could go left for some people now new voice command power is coming as well in the new I drive in fact it's already started in a few of their models it lets you do much more natural language so when you want to navigate somewhere you can just say navigate me to or something like that as a opposed to the exact phrase you have to use in the earlier systems you can still blurt out the address in one phrase 350 Hudson Avenue New York City New York there's also a much more sophisticated dictation ability in partnership with your smartphone you can dictate more advanced emails or text even edit them by voice because they're using dragon voice technology that is partly cloud based to actually make sense of what you're saying but native commands on the iDrive systems are still processed and handled onboard in the car so you don't need a connection to make that stuff work not really part of I drive but related because it's LCD technology is a coming option it's in Europe now that would allow you to option up an all LCD instrument panel that's pretty slick because it allows you to change the kinds of information you've got and the way it's presented you can emphasize one gauge over the other it might change colors in sport mode it might drop a gauge or two out of there that aren't essential at the moment so that'll be coming as well