BMW iDrive CIC-High Retrofitted Touch GPS Navigation System - from Naviplus
BMW F22 228i MY14 - One of the Beemers we worked on, and the one actually wanted to buy one.
There are 3 things common with those so called 'German Prestiges' - covers Mercedes, Audi and BMW.
1. They have most of luxury features as 'standard' throughout every trim / badge.
2. And they are really expensive compare to their competitiors.
3. No Touch infotainment systems whatsoever.
1 and 2 are acceptable, you pay what you get and those brands just added more base features for higher price.
But No.3, they should realize there are tons of threads and comments about why aren't they releasing Touch screen system for their vehicles. - (Check out Whirlpool, you can see the battle between haters and fanboys)
In our honest opinion, I really do hoping they realese the Touch iDrive (BMW) , Touch NTG(Merc) and Touch MMI(Audi) audio systems anytime sooner. It's good for drivers and good for Car audio business - because the car has built in Touch and less work to do.
However, all they done was allowing their dials to become a touch pad. And Audi didn't even bother doing that till last min.
Well It's a great tech and great idea. Because surely no other Car manufacturers ever thought of implementing touch pad for their cars because they were busy injecting TOUCH SCREEN to the vehicle.
Except Lexus though, as they have both Touch pad and Touch screen.
The overall quality and function got much better compare to back when not even touch pad was available for BMW.
This is coming from whos first car already has factory touch infotainment system, yet when We've actually diven the new BMW 4 Series, We found that system 'Not bad as expected'. In fact, It's not bad at all.
But still BMW must realize that writing the letters on tiny touchpad will take more time than just dialing to the letters on the screen. If the auto completetion feature is going to kick in and save the time, you might want to just dial to the letters, not writing letter by letter till it shows auto completed address.
OR, You can even look for better one, a Touch Navigation system on your display.
Installation & demonstration image from Sat Nav installed on F20 118i 2013
As We are a Navigation solution specialist, and our systems are bascially factory friendly, we've been dealing with lots of Audi / BMW / Merc vehicles. Due to:
The factory audio system will remain same.
Touch screen Navigation system
Compatible with Rear Camera - Both Factory fitted / aftermarket.
Even those double din units like Pioneer or Alpine are great in quality and peformance, it's somewhat 'degrading' to be installed prestige vehicle like BMW. (Except for those Beemer without iDrive. It's inevitable)
And as iDrive has those multimedia features like Music Player, DVD Player, FM / AM Tuner etc, pretty much Navigation is what people look for.
The strength of our Factory screen integrated Navigation system for BMW is, that system has been designed relatively easier than other brand's. Thanks to BMW and our manufacturer.
There are still more to come with BMW's iDrive Integrated GPS system - in next post we will explain how this system gets Integrated and the pros / Cons of it, and probably some more detailed photos.
Stay tuned!
J Blake
