I spoke to BMW customer services in the UK today. Very helpful, and this is the gist of what they said....

BMW Germany are currently testing a range of as yet unreleased bluetooth phones manufactured by Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, and Siemens. They hope to release a list of compatible phones in the next month or so. I asume the phones will also be hitting the market soon as well.

Nokia - Personally I want a Nokia phone. But....Nokia are apparently treating bluetooth as a standard that they can alter as they wish and Nokia phones are becoming less compatible with equipment made by other manufacturers. i. if u want a headset for a Nokia BT phone, then you HAVE to have a Nokia one.

BMW are in heated discussions with Nokia to try and sort this out, but recognise that it is likely to be a long time (if ever) before they agree to change their own BT standard and then design and build the compatible phones.

At present BMW are recommending only the following
Motorola V600
Ericsson T610
Ericsson T630

Guess I'll have to bite the bullet and go for one of those. Very, very irritating.

I've ordered the Siemens S55 phonethingie in the armrest with my car. If in the oncomming month newer models are available I would rather have a new one. Strange that they don't recommend siemens anymore in the UK. My dealer told me siemens was the most stable one he had seen with the E60. :blink:

Do BMW have a cradle for the V600?

BMW do recommend the Siemens S55, however it is now rather long in the tooth and unavailable from Vodafone. Unless the SL55 is the same thing. Not sure about that.

No idea about the cradle for a v600. Can't see a lot of point to the cradle unless you really need to charge it in the car.

I'm going to use the Siemens S55. It's one of the most stable along with the
nokia 6310i ( useful, but too big ). I found a last S55 at my Vodafone dealer...
new model replacing it is the S65 - which BMW will have a armrest cradle for it
with it's new accessories lineup later this year... S55 is good enough :D

I just ordered a S55 at my KPN-dealer. No problem at all. I told him the phone was old and they didn't agree with me.. S55 is a nice phone. I have a SL55 at the moment but that one doesn't have bleutooth unfortunately. So have to switch to the S55. My brother is happy because I'm gonna give him my SL55 :D

I think the primary benefit of the cradle is that it connects your phone to the external antenna, improving reception and increasing the operating range of your phone whilst in the car.

Charging is the secondary benefit in my opinion

Does it connect the phone to the antenna??? I didn't know that. So in that way it will work like a conventional celphone with a carkit??

Yes, the cradle connects the phone to the antenna in the shark fin on the roof.