[Fronzdan]

I started getting ads for this thing on social media (which often means it’s crap). What’s the story with this, anyone familiar?

https://www.ottocast.com/products/ottoaibox-i3

I’m curious how it actually is supposed to work. It seems like it looks like a phone to iDrive. But I don’t get how it overrides iDrive and seemingly takes over the whole UI. A “phone” can’t do that so they must be using some kind of hack…which means a simple iDrive update would render it useless. I’m only a little interested because there are some apps I wish would actually be available that iDrive doesn’t allow. Things like the real BimmerLink interface. Slack etc

[spademonkey]

I just ordered it with purchase protection if it's bs, so I'll let you know.

[Coconut]

I tried one of these and sold it immediately afterwards. It uses CarPlay and the car sees it as a CarPlay device however the UI in the Ottobox is an older Android version. I hated how you cant have two CarPlay devices, you have to go through cars menu and remove the ottobox if you want to swap to your iPhone. Also the ottobox UI is very slow and the audio is out of sync with the build in apps (youtube, media player, etc). Strongly don’t recommend this unit