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      04-25-2012, 12:46 AM   #1
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Drives: 528i
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: United States

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Smile Office Integration with Galaxy Nexus (Partially Working)

Hi Folks,

I have a 2011 528 and have an android phone. I was quite intrigued with the BMW Office functionality but I was disappointed that there was no good support across all the major US Telcos for android phones. As you are probably aware BMW Office requires Bluetooth MAP profile and most phones do not include this, there seemed to be no possibilities of non-BB users using the Office functionality.

I am happy to report that the developers at XDA have cracked this and included the Bluetooth MAP profile in the Cyanogenmod 9 nightly ROM!!

With this ROM I have been able to pair my phone to the car to display and have the car read SMS messages. I did not have much luck with email even though iDrive shows me options related to email. I suspect my email does not show up due to some security issues. with our Exchange email. However I need to research more on this.

In order to get the BT MAP profile and at the very least get the SMS messages working, here are the steps I followed.

Please Note;

1) Full credit goes to XDA developers and their awesomeness in resolving this
2) I am not responsible for anything bad happening to your phone or car if you follow this procedure. In other words, You do this on your own risk!!
3) I am only listing the steps I followed to make fellow BMW drivers aware of this possibility.

Now,
If you have a rooted Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone,
you can install CM9-nightly "update-cm-9-20120423-NIGHTLY-maguro-signed.zip" available at http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?dev...o&type=nightly

If you do not have a rooted Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone (like I did until yesterday) here are the steps:

In short,
1) You need to root your phone and install a custom recovery

2) Install CM9-nightly "update-cm-9-20120423-NIGHTLY-maguro-signed.zip" available at http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?dev...o&type=nightly

In detail,

1) Download GNex Toolkit from XDA at http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1392310 . This is a swiss army knife to do a lot of stuff with your phone.

2) Backup your phone with a method of your choice.

3) Use GNEX Toolkit and instructions at http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1392310 to
-Unlock Bootloader
-Root your phone
-Flash CWM Recovery

4) download Cyanogenmod 9 nightly release update-cm-9-20120423-NIGHTLY-maguro-signed.zip from http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?dev...o&type=nightly

5) Install CM9 nightly on your phone. I followed instructions at http://www.theandroidsoul.com/instal...us-unofficial/

6) Reboot your phone



After your install is complete, pair your phone with the car.

Note 1: I could not explicitly find an option in the BT profile on either phone or iDrive to enable MAP profile. However, after pairing the phone, under Telephone Menu in iDrive, the screen showed what profiles were available (Telephone & Audio). In Office Menu in iDrive, under messages there is now a new filter with an option to show only Text Messages or Service Messages (directions I sent from Google Maps). When I moved the iDrive controller to far-right side, I had options to download emails!!

2nd note: The whole experience is not as intuitive as I would have preferred but important thing to note is the text messages are now working. All you can see is a spinning wheel in the nav so I could not really tell, whether the car was trying to read messages or just downloading my Phone Book.

3rd note: In case you dont see text messages show up on receipt in your phone, please pair your phone once again. I have had to do it only once since I had flashed a custom ROM on my phone for the first time.


What works,

1) SMS messages in car.
2) Car can read the SMS messages to you
3) You can call the sender directly from this menu itself

Unintended bonus,
1) With this ROM, now under telephone, Conference facility is available. This is not available under the standard Google ROM that comes with the phone and is also noted thus on BMW site.

What does not work,

1) Emails may work but they are not working for me. I suspect some security credentials our administrator installs on phone to block this. However I am not sure. Kindly let me know if any of you have better luck than me.

2) Calendar, Tasks and Notes do not work yet as I have just learnt that these do not use MAP profile to sync with the car but another BT profile called SyncML. So the quest for this functionality continues!

Enjoy!
Appreciate 0