E61 Bluetooth Contact Sync. Problem - Solved
10-26-2017, 09:08 AM
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Location: Napa, CA
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My Ride: 530xi Sportwagen
Model Year: 2006
Engine: N52
E61 Bluetooth Contact Sync. Problem - Solved
Hello all,
I have been battling a bluetooth sync. problem in our 2006 E61 and have a solution I thought worth sharing.
Our current smartphones (LG G4) will sync. with our 2006 530xi (CCC based audio system) and are able to make phone calls just fine. However, the contacts would not sync. My wife's smartphone ( LG G4) died recently, and we needed to buy her something new, so I wanted to find a phone that could once again sync. with the contacts. I tried a variety of Samsung phones (S3, S4, S5, S6), and couple of LG's (G4, G3), but they wouldn't sync. either. The only phone that would sync. fine was my old HTC One M7. Looking into the problem more, I found that my old HTC has a previous generation of bluetooth. I also found a bunch of conversations from people dealing with the same type of problem. Current phones won't sync. contacts, and those who had phones that worked fine for a while, eventually lost the ability to sync. contacts after an OS update. It all seems to point to a bluetooth software version incompatibility. Since all current Android phones are upgraded beyond that old version of bluetooth that works on my HTC, it seemed like no simple solutions would work for our car.
The only real fix looked to be an upgrade to a CIC based audio controller at a cost of nearly $5K. 
That doesn't make sense to us with a car that is listed below $10K nowadays, so we resigned ourselves to just not having contacts sync. up. Ultimately, I looked around at the current crop of smart phones, and bought my wife a Motorla Moto Z.
As expected, the brand new Moto Z synced. up just fine with our E61, but we also discovered that the contacts are indeed able to sync up again. WOOOHOO!!!!
If anyone has an older BMW and lost the contact sync. capability when you upgraded your phone, I highly recommend trying out a 2017 Motorola smartphone.
Jose
I have been battling a bluetooth sync. problem in our 2006 E61 and have a solution I thought worth sharing.
Our current smartphones (LG G4) will sync. with our 2006 530xi (CCC based audio system) and are able to make phone calls just fine. However, the contacts would not sync. My wife's smartphone ( LG G4) died recently, and we needed to buy her something new, so I wanted to find a phone that could once again sync. with the contacts. I tried a variety of Samsung phones (S3, S4, S5, S6), and couple of LG's (G4, G3), but they wouldn't sync. either. The only phone that would sync. fine was my old HTC One M7. Looking into the problem more, I found that my old HTC has a previous generation of bluetooth. I also found a bunch of conversations from people dealing with the same type of problem. Current phones won't sync. contacts, and those who had phones that worked fine for a while, eventually lost the ability to sync. contacts after an OS update. It all seems to point to a bluetooth software version incompatibility. Since all current Android phones are upgraded beyond that old version of bluetooth that works on my HTC, it seemed like no simple solutions would work for our car.
The only real fix looked to be an upgrade to a CIC based audio controller at a cost of nearly $5K. That doesn't make sense to us with a car that is listed below $10K nowadays, so we resigned ourselves to just not having contacts sync. up. Ultimately, I looked around at the current crop of smart phones, and bought my wife a Motorla Moto Z.As expected, the brand new Moto Z synced. up just fine with our E61, but we also discovered that the contacts are indeed able to sync up again. WOOOHOO!!!!
If anyone has an older BMW and lost the contact sync. capability when you upgraded your phone, I highly recommend trying out a 2017 Motorola smartphone.
Jose
