Everything on touch and voice control
BMW kills two birds with one stone and presents both iDrive 8.5 and iDrive 9. The first is an evolution of the current iDrive system, the second is also very similar, but is completely new and based on Android. The common denominator: the focus will be more on touch and voice control.
The current iDrive, the eighth generation, is only two years old. That doesn’t seem that old, but in the tech world everything has a shorter shelf life. That is why BMW is coming this year with a new version: iDrive 8.5. You can see that in the first image. Although it still strongly resembles the current iDrive, the ‘buttons’ at the bottom are particularly eye-catching. From now on, there is always a series of menu buttons on the touchscreen, because the operation moves all the way to the screen. If you are a fan of physical buttons to call up functions, you may not be a fan of the new iDrive.
BMW iDrive 9.
As we understood earlier, BMW is already working on a completely new generation of iDrive and 8.5 (as the numbers indicate) is more of an updated 8. We also get to see the completely new iDrive 9 (photo 2). In terms of appearance, the two can hardly be distinguished, the main difference is in the digital world behind the scenes. After all, iDrive 9 runs on an Android base, where iDrive 8.5 is still on a Linux base. You can consider iDrive 9 as a kind of amalgamation of Android Auto and iDrive. That means installing extensive apps that you can also have on your Android phone. Just like with iDrive 8.5, you have to rely on touch and voice control.
iDrive 8.5 will be available for the i4, X5, X6, X7, XM, iX and 7 Series from July with more models to follow. iDrive 9 will make its debut in the new BMW X1 and the BMW 2 Series Active Tourer from November 2023. It will be available in more models later.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl