BMW Connected Reviews

We just purchased an i3 an we’re excited to have BMWConnected/feature as we use a very similar service often in our other (non-BMW) vehicle. Car was purchased on 4/27 and I used the destination feature on 4/29 and was able to lock the doors. It has literally failed EVERY SINGLE command that it has been requested since that day.

At first I chalked it up to user error and didn’t think much of the problem. At least I was able to see the somewhat updated mileage/battery with the car; something that is SUPER important with an electrical vehicle, so it wasn’t a big deal. Then my mother-in-law got stuck trying to charge the car, with the “Low Cost” charging feature enabled that kept the car from immediately charging. I thought, cool, no biggie, I can swap that from BMWConnected ! WRONG! It’s a feature I BMWConnected , but that doesn’t work either. This caused me to drive 25 miles to my mother-in-law to swap the settings in the car, in part because the helpfulness (or lack of) of BMWConnected failing. Now all of a sudden without changing anything, it no longer shows the car in BMWConnected and request that “Add Vehicle” in order to get the best experience. However, just like every other upset soul on here, it gives an error when I try to RE-Add my vehicle to BMWConnected . So, now after all of that, I can’t use BMWConnected for ANYTHING at all. C’mon.

I was excited when I bought my new BMW that this one would have remote start and other remote actions and status views. It worked great for about 3 days and then stopped. I have called support 3 times and talked with local dealership. I am told it is a known issue. They give me all these steps such as updating Bmw connected in the car, removing BMWConnected from my phone, waiting a couple hours and then it is supposed to work but they tell me in the same sentence that it will go down again. Well, the steps only worked one time out of many, and yes BMWConnected stopped doing remote updates and commands after a couple hours, never to work again even after performing the steps. It has been over 3 months, not for sure how long it was going on before I bought my car. It is unthinkable that they would leave a system not working for so long. There are other glitches with the in car system such as automatic date time sync setting around 3 days in the future, heads up display music list does not always work with Apple car play without re-selecting a play list and a couple other oddities.
I still love the performance and handling of my BMW but they need to improve quality and support or my next car will not be a BMW.

I am so frustrated and disappointed with BMWConnected. I only use it to pay my monthly payment, because other than that, it is useless for my car. I bought my car in March of 2019 and only once for brief moment did it give me the accurate current location of my vehicle. It always to this day 9 months later tells me that it’s located at the dealer in Thousand Oaks. The remote features have never worked. It always tells me that the doors and the trunk are open. It tells me that I’m almost out of fuel even when the tank is topped off. Every so often, it will give me the correct mileage. It has failed every single command that I try sending to the car. It won’t unlock the doors, it won’t honk the horn, nor will it vent the car. I can’t visually check on my vehicle because that doesn’t work either. I have removed BMWConnected and reinstalled it from my phone, but that doesn’t help either.
You’ve told me before that you would look into it, but I’m still waiting.
BMWConnected is a lemon!!

The first month of having BMWConnected and my new BMW i3 was good. BMWConnected allowed me to check on the status of the charge and how long it would take to fully charge. I could remotely lock the doors in case I forgot with the keyless fob. But for the past 4 months BMWConnected has been completely useless. I have tried everything from deleting and reinstalling to restarting the phone numerous times and BMWConnected crashes every single time. I’ve never seen anything like this. And no updates have been available to fix this problem. With such quality technology in the cars one would think BMWConnected that allows things like navigation to sync with the car would at least work! I have been unable to use navigation in months since it is completely dependent on BMWConnected .

Word to the wise: do NOT forego Apple Car Play because BMW tells you that you can simply use an app to bypass all the shortcomings of the outdated tech in their older model cars. It is not so.

BMWConnected replaced the iRemote app that I used to use with my 2014 i3. The iRemote app worked very well and almost always did what I needed and all the functions worked. Then I was forced to use this BMW Connected app which replaced the iRemote app. BMWConnected just doesn’t function well at all. It’s slow to update the vehicle data and almost never can actual complete any remote service functions successfully.
It’s embarrassing that I work at a BMW dealership as a technician and have customers that are going through this same difficulty and frustration with BMWConnected. I have to tell them it’s not a problem with the vehicle or BMWConnected , but a “back end” issue that BMW is working on with no eta on a fix.
Hopefully someone at BMW will get this “back end” issue figured out for all of us...
Soon, before my subscription expires...or maybe they will offer a refund since it hasn’t worked in the past year. Haha, that will never happen, what am I thinking.

Just got a new X5 this month BMWConnected was working for about a week and now I cannot even add the vehicle to BMWConnected any longer gives a failed error report ... cannot use the remote features such as the auto climate control Or auto lock/ unlock etc.
I have contacted BMW several times and emailed them but nobody seems to get back with an answer ... part of my decision to get this new car was because of the remote app but now I cannot use it.
The developers should put out a notification to end-users to at least keep them informed of what is going on and when repairs will be made. Poor communication.. can give BMWConnected nothing but zero stars as it’s no longer useful until they fix the issues....

Today is Thursday, April 25 and I received an email from the developer that there was an outage but it has been repaired reinstall BMWConnected but it still does not work ...Same error “adding vehicle failed “

BMWConnected is a big disappointment for what should be a terrific set of technology features.

NO FUEL/DISTANCE TO EMPTY INFO OVER CELLULAR. BMWConnected only updates the state of the gas tank when connected to the car via the USB cable. If you don’t connect it, then drive a while, then check BMWConnected later to see your fuel level/range it will be completely inaccurate and overstate your remaining fuel.

EXTREMELY SLOW TO LOCK/UNLOCK, BEEP HORN, ETC. The system is very slow to respond to any command over cellular. Sometimes, the commands will not execute at all. Heaven help us if we forgot where we parked and rely on BMWConnected to light the lights or sound the horn. We may never find the car again.

MOST FEATURES AVAILABLE ONLY WHEN CONNECTED TO THE CAR VIA USB CABLE. The list of features available only populates completely when connected via the cable, which defeats the entire purpose. For example, BMWConnected cannot tell you if the lights are currently off, or if the car is locked, unless you’re in the car and connected via the cable. This is absurd.

It is either laziness or incompetence that BMWConnected cannot poll the car via cellular for the current state of the fuel tank, windows, lights, etc. BMWConnected could be made great quickly, but BMW either refuses to, or doesn’t have competent developers.

Nothing works here. If it does work it’s so delayed it’s no longer useful at the moment you need it to work. The praise we see for BMWConnected is more toward the idea of it from BMW fans, but in practice it is useless. We already know the 3D camera snapshot does not work even with permissions granted inside the car (I was successful in getting one photo but it bricked after that). The horn function is delayed so it won’t honk when you need it to. Logging out and back in will remove your car, which you will respond to by reentering the VIN, but then you’ll get an error and BMWConnected suddenly finds your previously entered car (took 3 minutes). It’s particularly frustrating to deal with BMWConnected because you expect all things BMW to work as well as the car. Better off to skip this until BMW hires proper programmers.

BMW doesn’t seem to know what it is doing with BMWConnected. It apparently works on some vehicles. On others, like mine, a brand-new $69K vehicle, it doesn’t work at all. It actually thought mine was a different vehicle at a different location, which is disconcerting because it purports to have features that allow you to unlock the vehicle and start the engine using BMWConnected . And their call-in help line is useless. I called multiple times and they had inaccurate information about my vehicle and no real solutions other than to mention that they’ve been having problems with the software for a long time and they’re still trying to fix it. I assume they’re trying to “keep up with the Joneses” with BMWConnected, since other manufacturers offer similar functionality, and they’re failing.

Plan to spend hours logging in and out in hopes of resetting. Been using BMWConnected couple years with 4 cars. Used to autopopulate nav with next destination in your phones calendar. No more. Used to show your calendars on the iDrive screen but did not allow you to set destination by clicking on an event. Used to reliably allow remote unlock and lock. No more. Used to allow remote 3D view. Now gets stuck and always shows your vehicle in a showroom at Welt. Shows your calendar destinations under a tab called Activity and shows your past activity under a tab called destinations. Both lists not in any chronological order. Some pages show real time fuel level and range door lock status while other pages haven’t updated these data in 3 weeks. Disappointing that such useful potential is being neglected by such a prestigious company.

It’s not by chance the overall rating for BMWConnected is lower than 2 stars. We, bimmers, love our BMWs because of its resemblance of high quality in engineering and product. Of course that we would expect anything with BMW brand would follow suit with the cars quality that we buy. BMWConnected falls very short on the quality side. Takes longer to be read by the car systems on the initial plug, no remote (Bluetooth) support, had functionality removed (remote fan schedule), takes at least 5 minutes (when returns and don’t freezes) to revert feedback about remote lock/unlock, just to name a few. I still have it because I do want to keep track of my car mileage and gas range, but other than that, I wouldn’t keep it. When BMW comes with an update that address my concerns and everybody else’s on this review thread, I’ll come back to adjust my review.

While supposed to be serving as a convenient addition to your BMW, it doesn’t live up to its vehicle counterpart’s reputation. So many supposed-to-be-awesome features just don’t work. For example, the status check on the locks, which is one of the most important, is slow in updating and sometimes even won’t update at all, which can be totally misleading. Some online services are provided, but it just merely provides a link to be opened in the browser, rather than integrate them in BMWConnected . Seems there’s still a long way to go.

Surely there are some working cool features, like ventilating and sending your destination in advance. But as an app indeed you need more improvement. If you just take off those undeveloped features I’ll be happy to give a 5-star.

BMWConnected literally hampers the interaction with your car for things that are supposed to be easy. Using music apps for instance is an utter, frustrating nuisance and actually creates a more unsafe environment than not having BMWConnected at all. It gets in the way when you want to cast from your phone via Bluetooth to the car and requires you to fumble and acknowledge to dismiss a warning in lieu of just letting the music play. I removed it and everything works better. I was about to bring it in to see if firmware existed. I would have liked to have some of the other features but based on other reviews seems its a spotty experience. It’s an expensive vehicle. It’s sad they can’t put a little bit of resource into tightening up the experience

Just like with every technology out there, competition is fierce and rapidly advancing their car tech. In my opinion BMW is no different, however I do recommend that developers refine their app interface to do more such as remote auto start my 4 series, it is 2019 and that technology is over 10 years old, how about provide maintenance schedule updates that would upload to the phone’s calendar or schedule, send trip info directly to NAV instead of inbox messages etc. BMWConnected is a good start, nonetheless anemic compared to other manufacturers. BMWConnected is about to get deleted for its lack of usefulness once the novelty wears off.

I have enjoyed BMWConnected and have used the many features, such as lock/unlock, locate vehicle, ventilation, destinations, etc. I have always found it to be a good complement to the car. Overall it was decent and functional. Could it be better yes, but I used it effectively.

With the new update I can no longer locate my vehicle. It says the gps has been disabled on my car and that I have to mess with my car to fix it. Maybe that will work; I don’t know as I am out of town. No other update has disabled features prior to this update. I’m not sure if anything else has stopped working.

I will edit this post if this feature can easily be re-added. The cars are fantastic. The apps for me have been decent; if they could be better implemented and have features to match the cars BMWConnected would be a true winner.