iDrive rebooting only when phone BT connected

[Symon]

I've had my 2014 i3 REx for almost 3 years now without any difficulties. However, an issue has started occurring in the last two weeks. Whenever my paired telelphone achieves a BT connection with my i3, my iDrive unit reboots. This continues a number of times (5 or 6) until, it would appear, my iDrive unit completely resets (i.e. all programmed radio stations are lost and the BT pairing to my telephone is "forgotten"). If I then re-pair my phone, the problem just repeats.

The sequence of events is
1 - Unit appears completely reset (all programmed radio stations lost and BT pairing is "forgotten") - unit is stable, remains on, all functionality appears normal (except BT - nothing is paired).
2 - Radio stations re-programmed, navigation system is used, audio is played from connected USB device (my iPod) - everything operates entirely correctly with no unit reboots happening.
3 - I enable bluetooth but pair nothing - everything continues to operate entirely correctly.
4 - I pair by phone. Phone pairing is achieved, but... about 5 seconds subsequent to my iDrive identifying my phone connection - the iDrive reboots,
5 - The above continues to happen repeatedly subsequent to each reboot, until... it appears that my iDrive is complete reset and does not achieve a BT connection to my phone as pairing is "forgotten"

I am still using the same phone I have used for well over a year now. Does anyone have any suggestion about how to resolve this problem?

 

[i3Houston]

Had the same issue on 15rex. Never had the issue before so it maybe related to the Android OS on the phone and since first week of January there was no reboot.

 

[user 1637]

This is intriguing...because I have the same issue with 2014 REX. I've never had an issue in the last 4 years. But now - all of the sudden - it's rebooting. If I "forget" the car via BT on my phone - zero issues. The last time I brought my car into the dealer (REX oil change) was in Nov 2019. I don't recall them doing any software updates.

Yesterday, the issue came back. I couldn't do anything last night besides deleting the pairing, but this AM, I tried seeing what was going on.

I unpaired my phone (to Car - and Phone removed from Car). Then I tried different settings (Car/Phone bluetooth settings) and then repairing to see if something would fix it. Between each 'failure' (i.e. iDrive would reboot), i would delete the pairings (Car and Phone).

I tried:
1) No allowing Contacts. Nope.
2) No 'Office' support. Nope.
3) Telephone 1 vs Telephone 2. Nope.
4) No 'Images'. Nope
(BTW, these were accumulating...so #4 had #3, #2, and #1 turned off).

After the final retry, my iDrive went default and that just p****ed me off, so I stopped (I hate having to reset everything...and I forgot to back it up to USB first).

I didn't get to try turning off "audio" or no "Telephone"...because I NEED those to work because that's all I ever use.

Could it be a Phone related problem? I'm using a Pixel XL (android v10 - last update was Oct 2019)...

-Tom

 

[user 1637]

UPDATE - I got my phone to reconnect. This is what I did:

1) I updated my software to the latest version from the BMW site: https://www.bmw.com/en/footer/software-updates.html
a) this did not fix it alone.
2) I followed the instructions below for rebooting my phone into 'safe mode' then repairing my phone with the car.
a) https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/ajud3l/pixel_3_xl_bluetooth_keeps_crashing_my_bmw_idrive/
3) After rebooting my phone and the car, everything worked.
4) I did find this also which says to disable the media function of bluetooth...
a) https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/dqtifh/pixel_4_disabling_bluetooth_a2dp_hardware_offload/