[markronnie]

My free trail is expiring on July 3. I purchased my 24 X1 28i with the Premium Package. I’m still on the fence about renewing the Digital Premium feature.

There has been a lot of confusion/conflicting opinions on the forum threads about what will actually be eliminated when Digital Premium is no longer active on ID9.

2 questions:
1st - Has anyone in the USA let the subscription expire & what was actually omitted? I’m uninterested in any games, news ir sports radio & though Spotify is a nice to have, paying for Serius XM is enough music wise for me.

2nd- Did the MyBMW app offer another free extension soon after yours expired? If so, how many days afterwards?

[guppy]

I'm in Canada but I think it's the same as USA. 2024 28i. My Digital Premium just expired yesterday and I've just got back from a ride in the car and found:

* Downloaded apps are gone (I was using Pocket Casts for podcasts)
* The entire Digital Premium "tab" in the apps menu is gone
* I only have the 3 themes now (personal, sport, efficient)
* 3D buildings are gone in nav
* Traffic off route is gone in nav

It seems to pretty well follow the table at the end of this page

https://www.bmw.ca/en/topics/offers-...-overview.html

I do NOT have an offer to extend in the MyBMW app. In the car under the connected drive store, it tells me I can now subscribe to Digital Premium "starting at $12.99" (that will be CDN $)

[markronnie]

Originally Posted by guppy

I'm in Canada but I think it's the same as USA. 2024 28i. My Digital Premium just expired yesterday and I've just got back from a ride in the car and found:

* Downloaded apps are gone (I was using Pocket Casts for podcasts)
* The entire Digital Premium "tab" in the apps menu is gone
* I only have the 3 themes now (personal, sport, efficient)
* 3D buildings are gone in nav
* Traffic off route is gone in nav

It seems to pretty well follow the table at the end of this page

https://www.bmw.ca/en/topics/offers-and-services/bmw-digital-services-and-connectivity/bmw-connected-drive-digital-premium-overview.html

I do NOT have an offer to extend in the MyBMW app. In the car under the connected drive store, it tells me I can now subscribe to Digital Premium "starting at $12.99" (that will be CDN $)

Appreciate your input & THANK YOU.
The themes would not bother me at all. However 3D buildings & live traffic outside of NAV route destination would be missed.

In USA it’s $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year.

[Cam330i]

Originally Posted by markronnie

Appreciate your input & THANK YOU.
The themes would not bother me at all. However 3D buildings & live traffic outside of NAV route destination would be missed.

In USA it’s $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year.

Hello!

I believe the Intelligent Personal Assistant (aka: "Hello BMW") is no longer available once the subscription expires. Because of this, I am not sure if Siri/Google/Alexa are affected by this or are even useable following the deactivation of this feature??

Also, I'm not sure how to post PDF's on here, but if you search "BMW Digital Premium" they have a PDF that goes in a little deeper about the subscription

https://www.bmwusa.com/content/dam/b...6559202447.pdf


TBH - given the overall performance/ratings/reviews of iDrive 9, I would not be interested in renewing the subscription - its a BMW; you're already paying a lot of money for the car, but to twist my arm and charge me even more to use things that should be standard/included with the car is just ridiculous and this brings back memories to 2019 where you have BMW experimenting with Apple CarPlay Subscriptions - Apple CarPlay was, at some point, going to be made available as a subscription following the free one year trial that came with the 2019 models.... that didn't last long now did it? If you search "BMW Apple CarPlay Subscription" you'll find people talking about it and if you look at some vehicle window stickers for MY19, you'll see "Apple Carplay with 1 year subscription" somewhere on it. They eventually did away with that and made Apple CarPlay available permanently, but all this subscription stuff is making me roll my eyes and say "here we go again"

Anyways, I hope this helps and keep us posted.

Cameron

[markronnie]

Cameron, thank you for response. I do recall seeing the pdf about premium digital however they purposely keep much of it vague as they continue to add done things. (So far I’ve not seen anything added I would he interested in)

If it’s true that the “Hello BMW” would be lost without the premium digital package I might sign up for the yearly rate; my wife loves the feature. Would you know if “Hello BMW” goes away does the speaker button on the right side of steering wheel still work? I think it does the same thing without saying “Hello BMW”

[guppy]

It's not correct about the assistant - I can confirm that it is still available. You just only have one choice in how it "looks" (dots or swirls).

[MontyB1]

Originally Posted by Cam330i

Hello!

I believe the Intelligent Personal Assistant (aka: "Hello BMW") is no longer available once the subscription expires. Because of this, I am not sure if Siri/Google/Alexa are affected by this or are even useable following the deactivation of this feature??

Also, I'm not sure how to post PDF's on here, but if you search "BMW Digital Premium" they have a PDF that goes in a little deeper about the subscription

https://www.bmwusa.com/content/dam/b...6559202447.pdf


TBH - given the overall performance/ratings/reviews of iDrive 9, I would not be interested in renewing the subscription - its a BMW; you're already paying a lot of money for the car, but to twist my arm and charge me even more to use things that should be standard/included with the car is just ridiculous and this brings back memories to 2019 where you have BMW experimenting with Apple CarPlay Subscriptions - Apple CarPlay was, at some point, going to be made available as a subscription following the free one year trial that came with the 2019 models.... that didn't last long now did it? If you search "BMW Apple CarPlay Subscription" you'll find people talking about it and if you look at some vehicle window stickers for MY19, you'll see "Apple Carplay with 1 year subscription" somewhere on it. They eventually did away with that and made Apple CarPlay available permanently, but all this subscription stuff is making me roll my eyes and say "here we go again"

Anyways, I hope this helps and keep us posted.

Cameron

I'd agree with all of that - especially as those who got ID8 cars like my wife gets all of that in your comments for free at no extra charge. Admittedly they don't get the gaming, or some customisation like a light sequence (she still gets one she just can't change it) so it seems very unfair that they suddenly become extras in ID9 behind a paywall.

I remember back in the day my Dad having to pay extra to get a Kenwood headunit and auto changer added or he got no music at all it was all extra, so BMW have had form in this area for years.

We have features in her car like the radar cruise we can turn on if we pay a subscription or buy outright, but its more expensive than if we had got it fitted, why in the hell would you do that?!? Crazy

[Cam330i]

Originally Posted by markronnie

Cameron, thank you for response. I do recall seeing the pdf about premium digital however they purposely keep much of it vague as they continue to add done things. (So far I’ve not seen anything added I would he interested in)

If it’s true that the “Hello BMW” would be lost without the premium digital package I might sign up for the yearly rate; my wife loves the feature. Would you know if “Hello BMW” goes away does the speaker button on the right side of steering wheel still work? I think it does the same thing without saying “Hello BMW”

Hello,

Upon further investigation, I misspoke about "Hello BMW" - it appears that you must be logged in with your profile to enable/use "Hello BMW", which is separate from Digital Premium. The only advantage with Digital Premium is you can change the appearance of BMW - either she will appear as bubbles or she can have a face.

TBH - I don't even know what is going on anymore with BMW and iDrive 9.

Down below is a screenshot of Digital Premium (incl. Contents) that I took from BMWUSA - Connected Drive website; its the PDF called: "Service Availability Matrix" and all the highlights were done/edited by me.

Ok - to recap: "Hello BMW" shouldn't be affected by the expiration of Digital Premium. The only change is just visuals.

Now what happens to Siri/Google/Alexa following the expiration of Digital Premium continues to be a mystery.



I'm also going to go out on a limb and theorize that alot of the problems/glitches/malfunctions that are associated with iDrive 9 has to do with that Digital Premium stuff. My cousin has a 2023 X1 (xLine) that has/uses iDrive 8 and I find that iDrive 8 is more responsive and less complicated than iDrive 9.

If I were to be on the X1 team, I would've given the X1/X2 iDrive 8.5 and called it a day. The fact that the X1/X2 (as of now) are the only ones available with iDrive 9 leads me to believe that these two models are the "Guinea pigs" or "test run" of iDrive 9 - usually BMW's flagship models (e.g., The 7, the X5, etc.) are the first to get the new tech and the fact the X1 and 7 got redesigned at the same time (MY2023), but only the X1 got iDrive 9 further supports this theory.

Anyways, I hope all this helps and keep us posted!
Cameron

[guppy]

I'm also going to go out on a limb and theorize that alot of the problems/glitches/malfunctions that are associated with iDrive 9 has to do with that Digital Premium stuff. My cousin has a 2023 X1 (xLine) that has/uses iDrive 8 and I find that iDrive 8 is more responsive and less complicated than iDrive 9.

It's not that - it's that ID8 is based on Linux and ID9 is based on Android which is a pretty fundamental change. While I'm super disappointed in ID9 personally (the fact that Android Auto can't stay connected for more than 5 mins is rage inducing), I think they will eventually fix it up. I just wish I wasn't paying for the privilege of being a beta tester for it!

[markronnie]

I’ll second that notion. Being the guinea pig tester is no fun. Wish automobile makers did more testing on their hardware & software before rolling it out to PAYING CUSTOMERS. Also, they need to be much more transparent when they do mess it up. Telling owners of the shortcomings & timeline of the fixes.

[richiro]

Originally Posted by guppy

It's not that - it's that ID8 is based on Linux and ID9 is based on Android which is a pretty fundamental change. While I'm super disappointed in ID9 personally (the fact that Android Auto can't stay connected for more than 5 mins is rage inducing), I think they will eventually fix it up. I just wish I wasn't paying for the privilege of being a beta tester for it!

Second this

Wild that they want to charge us for tech already built in to the car.

They recently killed the option to monthly subscribe to remote start, which I preferred as I never need it outside of winter.

The fact they want to charge to be able to unlock select ambient colors and features is also wild. They already paid someone to code it, subscription services for that kind of stuff is criminal. It’s already on the car.