BMW R1200RT/R1250RT Forum

A lot of what others have said. I bought a used pixel 5 for cheap (my personal phone is an iPhone), no sim just the connected app, MRA and Spotify. My understanding is that the pixel phones being Google devices have the “purest” form of the Android system and have the least connectivity issues. Using the Pixel phone has been a revelation for me (I had all of the iPhone aggravations). No dropouts, almost instant reconnects (<45 seconds). I only take my phone out of the compartment to change a route.

I now build my routes in MRA Gold (long time user of BaseCamp) on my computer or iPad in TomTom format, save them as a gpx file. To download the route into my connected app, I open MR on my bike phone and export the saved route directly to the connected app.

Would I have preferred the TFT to be a giant version of my garmin, yes but the functionality of my present set-up is such that I now use it exclusively without issue, so far.

I have had much more success over recent months since I started using a dedicated phone for just the Connected Ride and Navigation functions. It is a hand me down iphone 8 and works fine and fits nicely in the charging compartment. I have my iphone 13 mounted on a wireless charging Quadlock head on the handlebars and I use it just for streaming music to earbuds, and it could take phone calls but I never take or make calls when riding - ever!. It streams directly to the earbuds and not through the TFT as I see this as pointless, as it is just another connection to go wrong, and the phone itself has far better music controls than the bike. The wonderwheel is useless in this type of setup.

It is critical in making this setup work flawlessly (almost), that my iphone 13 has wifi switched off, otherwise the TFT detects it and may/will try and connect to it instead of the iphone 8. The TFT is unable to differentiate between wifi sources and will go into loops trying to work out what to do.

So setup is

Iphone 13
- paired by bluetooth to earbuds
- WiFi off
- Streams music only

Iphone 8
- Paired to TFT by Bluetooth for Connected Ride functionality, trip data, speed limits etc This pairing has to take place before the TFT will start trying to go into Map Mode
- Connected ride app has to be running and open on the iphone screen
- Connection via WiFi to TFT then takes place. This happen after bluetooth connection is established and the TFT and Connected Ride app both show "Map Mode" flashing as it tries to establish the WiFi Connection. I have all other historical wifi networks on the iphone8 deleted ("forget this network" option) so for example the iphone is not trying to connect to my home network at the same time as the TFT is trying to connect to the phone. Very important as this can easily prevent a wifi connection being made.
- Sometimes (maybe 25% of the time) I have to exit the Connected Ride app and go into iphone8 Settings/Wifi and force the connection to the TFT. Mostly the connection happens as soon as I get into settings and on these occasions it seems that the connection doesn't get finalised unless I go through the step of entering into iphone/wifi Settings. I then go straight back to the Connected Ride app and the display changes to Map Mode and a map appears on the TFT.

When I stop for fuel, providing I restart within about 10 minutes it seems to reconnect by itself. Longer than this and I have to go into Settings/Wifi again and select the TFT wifi SSID.

Once its working I get essentially 100% ongoing connectivity. There are places in my weekly commutes where even my Audi Car Apple Car Play drops out due to what I think is two way radio interference in a Transport Industrial zone as it "always" drops out. In these areas the Map Mode on the Bike drops out too, but that isn't a BMW issue. What BMW has to work on is making the connection process automatic, and NOT having to keep the Connected App open and the front selected active app on the iphone.

I save MyRoute App Routes in Gpx1.1 format and they load onto the iphone8 just fine and they can be called up onto the TFT.

I plug the iphone8 into the USB socket in the charging bay with a short cable as wireless charging alone is inadequate in keeping up with the drain on the phone of running Map Mode. On wireless charging after a 6 hour ride the iphone has dropped from 100% to 70%. Wireless charging also generates enormous heat which I don't think is good for the phone. Even with the internal fan