CooperCountryman
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Mini Cooper Connected with Pandora drive-on
Pandora founder and chief strategy officer Tim Westergren just rolled up to our CES trailer in the new Mini Cooper Countryman with Mini Connected, which features integration with Pandora's iOS app when an IPhone is plugged in. Once you plug the phone in and switch to the app, Connected takes over and you navigate and control Pandora using the Mini's rotary jog dial -- BMW doesn't want you to mess with the phone while driving, so the iPhone essentially serves as a 3G modem. The Connected interface is quite clean -- it's definitely more user-friendly than the BMW iDrive system from whence it sprang -- and we were jamming along to 32Kbps Pandora streams in no time. That's a little better than FM quality, and the Pandora app does a little buffering so any gaps or blips in signal are smoothed over. Phone calls are handled by the Mini's Bluetooth system, so Pandora fades out when a call comes in, and fades back in when you hang up. It's definitely slick -- and Pandora is actually just the first Connected app to launch, with more iOS apps from Mini's partners due to come in the future. Video and PR after the break. %Gallery-113316%
