BMW Motorrad Connected 4+

Much improved from 2023 but…

This app does a great job tracking detailed info about my rides, and I love that data. I’ve been using the app since 2021, and it’s gotten much less buggy over time. I don’t really use the navigation options because there are more robust options available but bike and ride tracking data are great. Ride recordings are usually automatic and include speed, lean angle, accel and decel G, ABS events, etc. Very cool.

There is one irritation still in the app - about once a month my authentication to the app expires and I have to re-log in. There’s no notification of this and the app won’t do anything (including local, non-cloud related things) until I log in. My only clue is that I’m 20 miles into a ride and notice the speed limit for the road I’m on isn’t displayed on my bike’s TFT in the white box like it usually is. And since I don’t notice this for a bit the first part of the ride isn’t tracked and is lost.

So I find a safe place to pull over, take off my gloves, unlock my phone, open the app and my password manager, log in to the Connected app, re-glove, and tracking resumes. If I’m in a group ride this isn’t feasible. It would be great if the app would still track and provide speed limit data to the bike pre-login, or don’t expire the login, or at least do a push notification to the user in the phone or bike when re-authentication is required. I suppose if this is my biggest complaint the app is pretty good.

Overall a great app but a little buggy

I have been enjoying the BMW connected ride with my F750GS for about a year now. The bike integration is fantastic, but there are a couple of bugs that need to be addressed:
- The real time speed limit is displayed in Km/h although I have set my preference to use Miles/h as the speed unit. A couple of releases back there was a different issue where the reported speed limit was one mile less than the actual limit! After fixing that issue, it is amazing to see a completely different issue affecting the same functionality!
- The percentage of fuel remaining occasionally gets “stuck” at a certain level and won’t reflect the true fuel remaining. Once the tank is topped again, it jumps back to 100% and continues to be accurate until it will get stuck at some random point and won’t go down anymore! In contrast, the estimated remaining mileage seems to work correctly and stay always in-sync with the bike.

Overall, the app is great and works quite well! Thank you!

Cristal vulnerability

I own both the R1250RT and the R1250GS and in my opinion the overall Connectivity package and specifically the Navigation component, is a poorly designed package that is unreliable to the point of making it almost unusable save for a trip to the local supermarket. Even in this case you had better know where it is. The designers of the 2021 RT clearly do not own a modern smart phone as anything other than the smallest models do not fit the phone enclosure. Also the designers are not aware of how people use their phones given that the Connectivity App must be the dominant app and always open. If you try and access any other App the mapping function will stop working. Perhaps for some this is ok but the killer is the unfailing unreliability of the system. It is so unstable that you can not rely on it for touring or even the most simplest of routes. It’s when and not if the Connected App loses connection with the TFT the only remedy is to stop the bike, remove the phone from its prison, switch the ignition off and attempt to reconnect. If you are lucky it will reconnect but only until you lose the connection again, typically 15-20mins down the road. If the same shabby design and implementation standards were applied to any of the safety systems on the bike it is no exaggeration to say lives would be lost.

Developer Response ,

Hello, thanks alot for the feedback. We are sorry to hear that the app is not working properly on your smartphone. We would like to take a closer look and help you. It would be great if you could send us an email to connectedride@bmw.com so we can ask you fruther questions. Thanks in advance!