Quote:
Originally Posted by AP
Yeh 3 things in the mix there
I drive software (I drive 6 in your case)
Map data
I step level
I drive software I believe only a bmw dealership can update
Map data is updated every 3 months and downloadable to a usb drive assuming the contract is transferred over. It's free for the first 3 years and then something like £160 per year after that (haven't got to that quite yet with mine). There may also be small over the air updates for small map areas but this won't be for the whole map area as it's around 32GB in size. This is arguably the item worth having out of all of these 3 items we are discussing
Last one is an istep upgrade. These seem to be quite frequent and are the firmware for car covering things like instrument cluster , lights and all sorts of other Ecuador present in the car. When you read about people coding their cars, it's these eco that are being changed, a bit like editing the registry in windows with values that have an effect on the behaviour or function, turn some functions on or off - that sort of thing.
Istep is internal to bmw and not customer facing but obviously many here know about these. There are very knowledgable people on here that know these inside out.
Bmw will update these regularly and they may address bugs or may cater for new functionality in later model cars. Updating the istep is not going to give you any new functionality ( unless possibly via coding the unofficial route)
Chances are won't notice any difference with I drive it istep upgrades but I'd argue getting map updates is more tangible potentially.
|
thanks, just spoke to bmw connected drive services, they have confirmed the idrive version is 5 November 2017, and idrive 5 november 2019 is available - the garage should do this as a matter of course. but under no circumstances could the garage update to idrive 6. So perhaps the buyer might be on the lookout for cars with idrive 6, that said, they advised that there are little differences between 4,5,6 and massive difference in 7.