After visiting my local BMW dealer (for another reason – the car was faulty) I decided to enquire on the current situation regarding the iPhone and my car – 2005 330d M sport.

Interestingly, I received a 2008 325d M Sport as a temporary car, it had SatNav+iDrive so I paired my phone.

The address book worked first time.

When picking up my car and enquiring I was told that cars after 2007 should work fine but prior to that there was no guarantee. The iPhone is not on the BMW Bluetooth supported phones list.

I enquired about a Bluetooth upgrade, it was going to cost over £200 and there was no guarantee that it would work. There was also the possibility of other components of the car not working correctly and needing resolving on top of this, which would then potentially increase the costs almost exponentially.

So looks like I’m stuck until I replace my car.

Interesting that 2.2 is out later this week, although given the above, and past reading on the web – I suspect it will not make much difference. Fingers crossed.

Further reading http://blog.scoopz.com/2008/10/11/fix-for-iphone-and-bmw-idrive-address-book-not-synchronising