Munich. Over the past few days, the revamped BMW News
app has been rolled out to millions of BMWs. With this update, the
News app becomes a broad, convenient and intelligent in-vehicle news
service that can be tailored to the customer. This means BMW is now
offering an improved service to meet the growing customer desire for
news-on-demand and infotainment podcasts. The key new functions are
personalised, intelligent filtering of news, significantly higher
audio quality and the introduction of news feeds. Accessing news will
now be as easy and entertaining as listening to the radio, and time in
the car will be spent more in line with the customer’s interests and
on-demand requirements.
New functions.
- With the introduction of personalised news, the
customer can select categories to receive news only on topics of
interest. Through the additional “liking” of individual posts, the
intelligent app continuously learns the preferences of the customer,
enabling it to customise the news feed even more precisely. - Personalised news and top news stories are provided at
high audio quality for a convenient and pleasant
listening experience. Instead of a text-to-speech computer, the
content is read aloud by speakers. Customers can filter the content
according to country and language. - By integrating additional and major news
providers, the News app provides a significantly greater
variety of news reports. - Through a mixture of short top news stories and longer reports,
news feeds offer a more enjoyable infotainment
experience. The duration of news feeds can be adjusted to match
personal preferences, for both long and short trips. The feeds can
be launched with one simple click.
The improvements to the BMW News app are based on feedback from
selected customer test groups who have tested the News app in the
vehicle under realistic conditions over an extended period. In line
with customer feedback, the developers focused in particular on
improved audio quality, intuitive operation and the desire for
personalised, intelligent preselection.
Availability.
The News app from BMW is an
integrated vehicle application in BMW Operating System 7. Due to the
flexibility of the software, it does not require a Remote Software
Upgrade. However it requires at least version 20-11 of the BMW
Operating System. BMWs that meet the minimum requirements will
automatically receive the update to the News app in the vehicle over
the coming days and weeks. Customers with the appropriate vehicles in
the European markets (DE, UK, FR, ES, CH, AT, IE) will be the first to
benefit from the new News app. Over the course of the year the News
app will also be rolled out to additional countries worldwide.
General information on Remote Software Upgrade and BMW
Operating System 7.
Since 2018, BMW Operating System 7
and Remote Software Upgrade have enabled BMW drivers to keep their
vehicle up to date with the latest software version quickly and
easily. The new functions can be conveniently installed in the car
over-the-air. The installation files are prepared in the vehicle in
the background, after which it will rarely take more than 20 minutes
to install even extensive upgrades.
Customers are informed of an available Remote Software Upgrade via
the My BMW app or in the Control Display in the vehicle. The software
version can also be viewed in the vehicle settings under Remote
Software Upgrade, and the customer can search for available upgrades.
Remote Software Upgrade is now available for more than 20 BMW models
and thus almost for the entire BMW fleet. Only the next possible
upgrade is offered for installation in the vehicle. The customer can
never install a wrong version.