The old BMW is renovated and installed with a S50 smart screen

  6
 August 18, 2024

This is the effect of the installation.

In fact, I wanted to change to a new type of driving recorder a long time ago, for two reasons. One is that although the 525 of the F18 chassis I am driving now has a central control screen, the navigation version that comes with it is too old, and carplay and the like do not support it, so I can only hang up a mobile phone for navigation. And it was only after my father gave me the car this year that I found that the license plate driving recorder installed in the 4S store was not only illegible, but also automatically reverted to the initial time as soon as the flameout recorder was turned off. Very annoyed. Because we didn’t have a BMW 4S store in Shiyan in 2014, we bought the car in Wuhan for a long time, and we didn’t bother to go to Wuhan for a driving recorder, so we decided to change it.

I bought a 4G version of Mini 5 when I was free during the National Day holiday. The most important thing about buying MINI5 is that I have my eye on remote monitoring and 4K HD picture quality. Of course, these two points did not disappoint me, but I encountered trouble when installing parking monitoring on the bus. Our local cooperative network has been unable to find constant electricity. As for the problem of reading a lot of comments that MINI5 will get hot after a long time, at least I haven’t encountered it so far. I saw the S50 evaluation activity because I bought the official account that MINI5 followed and signed up. A few days later, the official called me and told me that the application was approved. At that time, I almost regarded the phone customer service as a fraudulent call.

Installed MINI5

The center console seen from the outside, the car is a little dirty, please ignore it.

After I got the S50, I found that this machine was very similar to the Huawei car smart screen that I had followed before. Later, after searching the Internet, I found that this was the second generation. No wonder I had to fill in the model of Huawei’s mobile phone when I signed up for the event. Because I am a regular user of Huawei, I am very happy and intimate to see Huawei’s cross-border products. I have never bought the first generation smart screen before. The main reason is that the equipment is too high to be installed in the central control position, because the mobile phone bracket bought before is too high to press directly on the front screen, but fortunately the S50 does not have this problem.

If you install it forward, it won’t hit the front shield.

As mentioned earlier, I found my local cooperative network when installing MINI5, but I did not install it successfully, so my S50 smart screen was temporarily connected to the cigarette lighter, which is a bit unsight. the line hangs directly from the central control, and the obsessive-compulsive disorder looks uncomfortable, so I bought a 3-meter-long data cable and planned to come around from the B-pillar. Later, I went to the 4S store to find a familiar master, only to know that the official BMW recorders are connected from the A-pillar to the controller above the throttle instead of the safe box. I would like to thank Wang Dong of Shunbao in Shiyan for helping me connect with the heat-shrinkable tube. Thank you very much!

Here, I would like to remind you that when you encounter a small store that will not install it, you must not force it. It is best to communicate with your familiar 4S shop master. Incorrect installation of car appliances will lead to the risk of spontaneous combustion. Back to the point, if you want to connect to the cigarette lighter like me, remind you to use the cigarette lighter connector in the official box, because the general connector may output a maximum voltage of only 2A, but the voltage requirement of this smart screen is higher, staring at the official cigarette lighter connector is 3.5A, the machine with too low voltage will not start or burn easily.

After this twists and turns, the lines are finally connected, and the two devices are also in normal use, that is, the MINI5 is installed in the rearview mirror, and the S50 rips off the back glue directly and pastes it on the center console, so you don’t have to worry about the S50 sticking off with the back glue, because this back glue is really very big, and it is very safe after my half-month trial. Everything is installed, the whole cab is pretty cool, the two screens complement each other, each does its own job.

What it looks like after installation.

In practice, MINI5 makes me feel good, quiet but powerful, and the videos and pictures taken are clear enough. The S50 is also quite powerful. First of all, the connection method, this is very simple, the mobile phone ahead of time to install a Huawei Hicar three-piece set, directly in Huawei Mall search on the line, a HiCar smart line, a driver care, a car space gesture, do not want so many functions, then directly download a HiCar smart line, the latter two belong to additional items.

Then open the smart screen and click the leftmost icon with a connection description, directly open the Bluetooth of the phone close to the smart screen, and enter the CAPTCHA on the smart screen on the phone to connect it. Only the first time you need to enter the CAPTCHA, then you will automatically connect. It’s a great experience. My wife and I use Huawei Mate20Pro and Mate40. We haven’t tested other models of mobile phones. I wonder if the connection will be so smooth.

After connecting to the phone, you can see that some APP has been transferred synchronously across screens, but not all APP can. The APP that can flow across screens is limited to applications in the Hicar area. I counted about 40, including some mainstream APP, such as Gaud navigation NetEase Yun music and so on, but not Wechat and QQ Music. I guess it will continue to expand in the future.

My driving scene is relatively simple. I need to navigate and play music when I go out, and another is to make a phone call, because my car has its own steering wheel voice control, so it is more convenient to make phone calls. so what I focus on on the S50 is navigation and music. In terms of navigation, the S50 can support both Gaud and Baidu, and the two applications can switch seamlessly at any time, which is very smooth, which is great. And the switch from the phone to the smart screen is also very smooth, you can directly set the navigation on the phone, the smart screen will display synchronously, and the response is very fast, millisecond level. Because the screen is much bigger than the mobile phone, the navigation is also very clear. It is very friendly to people who are not short-sighted like me and will never go the wrong way again. But this navigation function also has a small drawback, that is, does not support cruise mode, I do not know if I set a problem or the smart screen does not support it, anyway, this has always bothered me. If you get on the bus without setting navigation, the resolution of the navigation road information displayed on the smart screen will be very small, and it will still be very small when zoomed in to the maximum ratio, and it will not prompt for information such as speed limit, which is really not a good experience. because sometimes you don’t need to drive navigation when you run some familiar roads, but you will ignore the speed limit and other information. I hope the authorities can update it as soon as possible.

In terms of music, I have been using NetEYun music, and members have been open for ten years, so it is very happy to see S50 support NetEase member seamless conversion, and my favorite playlist is also synchronized, just like walking on the road and suddenly meeting like-minded people, very comfortable, and if you click to the music home page, you will also synchronously display the lyrics, very nice, sing and decompress along with the big screen on the way to and from work. It is also gratifying to note that the S50’s internal AI camera supports gestures to start and stop music, which is quite cool and shows off again in front of friends.

There are other official promotional functions, such as ultra-wide-angle triple shooting, actually because the reversing camera is optional, so my current S50 is two shots. In particular, I would like to mention that the design of the front driving camera is very ingenious. It can be adjusted up and down to 10 °. Here, an official picture is more intuitive, which is absolutely not available in other recorders. It is very good, and the shooting angle can be adjusted flexibly and conveniently. And the videos and pictures are absolutely clear. The picture posted below is not very clear because the website is compressed, but in fact, you can see clearly the license plate facing the driveway and the phone on the wall.

The driving video supported by the on-board smart screen S50 can record the video image and sound of the whole driving process of the car, and it is circular video recording. For the time being, the memory is 32 gigabytes of eMMC storage, and you can install your own TF card with a maximum of 128 gigabytes to expand storage. You can play the driving monitor directly on the screen or in the staring app. During this period of use, both on-screen and mobile phone playback is very smooth and does not stutter at all.

Watch the playback directly on the S50 smart screen

Stare at the playback video watched on the app.

The internal AI camera officially supports functions such as video calls, spaced gestures, AI driving care, internal parking surveillance and so on. This can be regarded as a new gadget with additional items. After trying it out, it is still quite cool. According to my estimation, this driving care should be realized by collecting eye data. As for whether it is or not, we will have to wait for the official to reveal the answer.
Overall, this smart screen is really eye-catching, and many new features have also been applied to practice, but there is still a need to polish the details. I hope manufacturers can fix these small bug as soon as possible.

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