[nealf]

Hi brand new here. I had trouble with the search so I am asking

just bought a 2012 X3 with backup camera but NO Nav. Therefore I have the small screen.

My question is, can i retrofit with the larger Nav screen in order to get a larger backup image and just an overall larger display? The car is for my son and eventually i may want to do a Bimmer Tech Apple Car Play conversion so a bigger screen would be ideal.


I own several other Bimmers and have done the similar on my 2000 E39 540, I easily upgraded to the larger screen for display.

Please let me know thanks!

[Zheez]

I think a 2012 car is going to have either a CHAMP2 or an Entry head unit which can't support a larger OEM screen.

If you did want the larger screen, keeping genuine BMW parts, you'd have to retrofit an EntryNav head unit (available with or without navigation, confusingly) or NBT or later as well as the screen itself.

Easiest option is probably just to add an Android head unit. You can get 8.8" or even 12.3" screens available which would let you retain the BMW iDrive interface as well as giving you the ability to switch to Android and use CarPlay that way too. I've not done this on an F25 but I had one in my previous F30 which worked pretty well. Even if you didn't want to touch the Android side at all, it's still a fairly cheap way to get a larger screen than the car could ever originally be specced with.

Only thing is that the screen on the iDrive side would just be stretched to fill the screen unless a head unit that supports widescreen was retrofitted too (EntryNav, NBT, NBT Evo, EntryNav2). Or I think you can toggle it to have a kind of border on the side which negates the extra screen space somewhat, but still provides some benefit.

[nealf]

thanks, very helpful.

[littleob]

This is what I did. 12.3 Android from avinusa. Easy to install all plug and play and you keep all Idrive functions