The moment a lot of people have been waiting for has finally come. BMW Android Auto is going to be available for the entire BMW range starting this Summer. The German car maker announced its plans to introduce the software on its models last year, but it looks like only cars made from July onwards will be lucky enough to get support for Android phones.
They include the models built atop the UKL platform, such as the X1 or the 2 Series Active Tourer/Gran Tourer, which are still not available with iDrive 7. Other than that, all cars using the latest iDrive will get support from July onwards.
Just like Apple CarPlay, the Android Auto connection will be made using a wireless LAN connection. This means that owners of a smartphone with the Android operating system can now access their familiar smartphone apps in the vehicle, just like users of an Apple iPhone.
These include the digital voice assistant Google Assistant, the map service Google Maps, music streaming services such as Spotify and Amazon Music, and the messaging service WhatsApp. The driver and the occupants will be able to view all the important information from their Android devices on the Control Display.
Furthermore, navigation directions from third party apps, such as Waze or Google Maps will be shown in the instrument cluster and the optional Head-Up Display.
This is great news for a lot of people. According to BMW, this move took so long because the German carmaker claimed the Android platform wasn’t as safe in dealing with sensitive data from the phones as the Apple solution is.
Apparently, those safety issues have been dealt with and now we can enjoy our Android phones as well inside the newest BMW models.
