Originally Posted by turbogate

Try this:

- Go to your i-Drive settings and assign one of the steering wheel buttons (diamond/star) to the phone book (it's an option)
- Once you have your phone paired with the BTA1500, on the communication section of the i-Drive, you will see your phone's name in the lower left of the screen even if the system tells you to call BMW for more information (meaning phone not activated)
- If you press the phone icon on the steering wheel, it will try to connect (mutes the radio) for 10-15 seconds.
- While it's doing this, if you press the steering wheel button that you assigned to the phone book, you will see your contact list. It may take a while for everthing to show up if your list is big.

Now there are more tricks to actually dial from the car without having to activate anything from BMW. It's just that you have to go to some extra steps. But to summarize, I can make calls, receive calls, pull my recent calls, dial from the i-drive menu because of the BTA 1500 WITHOUT touching my phone and without any Phone/BT activation from BMW (besides off course the iPod initial activation).

I think what the BT activation does is give you straigh access to the dial menu/contact list without having to do those short cuts.

I know it's an old thread, but I hope that helps and that I explained it well. I'll try to do a short demo video one of these days.

Greg