iPhone Cable
 

So just realized my new-to-me car came without a cable...I looked at many of the threads on here were people recommend leaving an old iPhone plugged in (great idea...going to dig one out from the junk draw). However before I get there any recommendations on cables? The ones on Amazon don't get great reviews and I don't want to drop $70+ on an "Audi" cable...that's just crazy lol!

Most of the negative reviews come from people not understanding what the cable actually does or how it's supposed to operate. A lot of the cables will only transfer the music information but won't charge the device at the same time, the AMI wasn't really designed to act as a charger (from my limited research). These people then tend to blame the product when it's a limitation of the system its connected to.

Perfect example is I use an AMI to female USB cord (bought on Amazon), have music files stored on a thumb drive and use this to play the music on the AMI, works great! But the thumb drive didn't have enough space for my whole music collection, so I bought a SSD (1TB) to put more files on, but the AMI doesn't have the power capacity to drive this, so back to the thumb drive I go....

I may be wrong, and I am sure I will be corrected if so, but this is based off a little reading and my own mini-experiment...

There is an extremely well detailed thread here which from my reading, applies to our vehicles.

To get an iPhone to work, the way you are expecting, you need the cable model number 4F0051510AL. As far as price, shop around. As I type this, I'm seeing right now from an alternative seller on Amazon, cable 4F0051510AL, for $45 and $5 shipping. On eBay, I see one in an OEM package, for $25, you pay shipping.

You're trying to get your whole library recognized. Interesting, I was wondered why you weren't using the SD card readers in the car, since they each can reportedly support 64 GB cards, and your prior photo showed a 128 GB thumb drive.

I'm sure someone has tested it (hint I haven't searched for it) but if you powered the SSD (1TB) separately, it might work.

I already had the thumb drive, for the sake of a ~$10 cable it was worth a try. Plus I have a magnetic phone holder in the CD player slot which hinders removal of the SD cards a little, and to constantly change the music on the cards (due to the limited capacity) could be a bit of a pain, so for me the thumb drive was an easier option.

I have considered externally powering the drive to make it work, this is all just me playing around with it and seeing what I can and can't do, I have to admit it would have been great to have my whole collection at my fingertips and ready to go, by simply plugging it in!

Thanks to everyone for the advice and links - shopping around now!

FWIW, variously:

1. The cleanest sound is probably direct from the SD cards in the slots. IIRC that avoids a layer of filtering all other device connections have.
2. If I were thinking a USB drive, I would first just look at using the slots. A reader on the laptop side costs very little--if it doesn't already have the slot--and the media holds enough for all but the really large libraries.
3. From the screen shots I have seen, juxtaposed with occasional experience with Bluetooth connecting, a weak spot relative to cabling in with a supported device is likely the general MMI interface, particularly when switching or closing albums. If you do it by playlist, probably not a biggie. Otherwise, I think you back into building a folder structure organized around the way you like to access music/content.

On some other posts, to be clear a slave device like an old iPhone or iPod charges 100% reliably. Even ones that are many years old with presumably weaker batteries still work fine for me. If the device is newer/supports iOS changes back a lot of years now, it should also be able to sync the music library automatically from iTunes--if your parking spot reaches your home wi-fi.

Thanks MP4. I may go the SD card slot direction....it seems crazy to pay $25+ for a cord to power my phone after I've thought about it. I've already got a 12V charger that I can plug my phone into. Bluetooth connection for audible is fine and I can download hi-def files onto two SD cards and load to the jukebox

Is there a size limit on the SD cards the MMI can take? A couple of larger cards (256GB or 512GB) would cut down the swapping out a lot more?