Hello all trying to get to the bottom of this I want to know what are the scenarios that might make one end up with having a brown screen instead of grey. My friend has a 2008 550i with ccc and he told me his car came with the idrive menu in brown, he has recently updated his car software and the menu screen still remained brown and we just want to know why.

Heres what I think I know so far
-early 2004 e60s had brown screen menus
- software updates allowed ccc version cars to change from brown to grey

after some light research i discovered these 2 sites which talk about the same thing apparently others with 2008 cars also have the brown drive menu

BMW: NEW IDRIVE UPDATE : BMW 5 series Forum • BMWLand
Idrive brown vs gray? - Bimmerfest - BMW Forums

So can anyone clarify what is going on here I thought it was older cars with brown newer ones with grey did they switch back to brown in the later years? are there only some special rare scenarios where some people with 2008s have brown menus if so why? any one with any info feel free to chime in and help me solve this mystery

 

Brown is the original. The only thing I can think of is if the software has never been upgraded. Did he do it? Did the dealer do it? Or did the dealer just upgrade certain modules? Which can be done without upgrading the Idrive software itself.

 

But his car is an 08 my car is an 04 and I have the grey menus his car should of came with grey automatically and the dealer did a software update for him on 3 separate occasions he mentioned when changing his battery last year and also 2 years ago when adding mp3 to his car lastly 3 years ago he added xm radio to his car. as far as just modules go or entire car I don't know but gotta think the dealer did the whole car.