Hi,
First time poster, thought I would share some of my experience with the 7.1 8.8 unit I installed in RHD 2007 E90 CCC. (I'm in the UK). In the EU the 7.1 unit sells for 300 Euros (335 USD)
1. Install - watched a few videos on how to do this, but not many had any reasonable detail on how to route the cables up to the screen, or how to get the harness out of the way to allow the main unit to slot back into place easily. So
a) Getting the main unit to fit back into place. To do this I removed the glove box to get better access to the back of the unit, then pulled the original factory plug around the CCC mounting frame so it was no longer behind where the unit slots back into. Route the plug from the adapter harness into the same space and connect up.
b) Cable routing. Most videos I looked up brought the cable up behind the AC controls and then under the bottom lip of the screen. The first part of this is fine, but if you route the cables under the bottom lip of the screen it will not fit back into place correctly (holes don't line up which I have seen many people mention in this thread). Instead route the harness up to the left of the screen above the glovebox (remember my car is RHD) and then across into the space behind the screen. After doing this my screen went back into place easily with both mounting holes lining up perfectly.
c) GPS antenna. At first I had the GPS antenna supplied with the unit plugged in and positioned under the dash above he screen. I could have mounted this on top of the dash, but its ugly... The signal was sort of OK, but often struggled to get a 3D fix, especially in areas where coverage was poor. To sort this I bought a splitter cable (
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) and a converter (
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) to use the factory antenna. Outside my home this resulted in the number of satellites with lock increasing from 2 to 11.
2) Bluetooth. Split solution - Connected to the original CCC system for the phone connection, and connected to the android unit for audio streaming. I found that I could not get the audio volume high enough when in a phone call using the android unit, and also the mic pickup was better when connected to the CCC system. To do this, pair the phone to the Android system, then under the bluetooth settings for the connection on the phone just disable 'Phone Calls" and 'Contact sharing" . You can then stream music over bluetooth to the Android system and manage phone calls using the original CCC unit.
2) Music. I use Spotify installed on the Android system most of the time. Audio quality is OK, but not as good as the factory CCC system, so I still use this quite a bit to listen to the radio and CD's. I also copied about 10Gb of MP3 files over from a USB drive onto the unit itself, and these playback fine with the built in music player, again, not as high quality as the factory system, but OK.
3) Apps. Netflix and Amazon Prime video, YouTube etc. work fine. I use google maps for navigation. The only issue with this is that many of the controls are right at the edge of the screen, so pressing them with fat fingers is often difficult. Got a $1 stylus to solve this, and it also means the screen no longer gets covered in fingerprints (Top Tip). When using google voice assistant to ask for directions etc, the system will turn down any music playing, but often not enough for the system to hear you clearly. The solution I found to this was to install Android Auto on the unit. When using the voice assistant via the Android Auto app it mutes the audio source whilst listening, so the pickup is much better.
4) Reversing Camera. One of my favourite things... I bought a replacement trunk handle with a camera built in for 20 Euros. Cant recommend one of these enough. Earthed the camera directly to the battery with a crimped connector, then used the power lead built into the composite video cable to pick up 12V from the back of the Android screen. On the screen harness this was a brown wire marked and "Camera Power +12" which is only active when the car is put into reverse. The 3D overlay of the parking sensors on the live camera image and the active guide lines are killer.
5) Performance. Startup is about the same as most people have experienced, but my the time I've turned the car on, driven out of my garage and to the bottom of the driveway its all up and running. With android auto, google maps navigating and Spotify streaming music the CPU usage sits around the 70% mark, occasionally hitting 100. I may bite the bullet and get the 8.1 6 core unit to compare, now currently on sale at 320 Euros (It was 500 Euros when I bought my 7.1 unit for 300).
6) Turn off auto to switch to AUX in the factory settings. I was getting a strange audio issue, specifically sometimes the navigation instructions would suddenly get very loud and just on the left channel. Tracked this down to switching between AUX and RADIO/CD. The factory setting automatically switches to the AUX input when you press the menu button for 3 seconds when switching from the CCC to the Android system. I found this auto switching feature to be the cause of my navigation audio glitch. Turned this off, no more glitch, I just have to switch to AUX manually (use one of the programmable buttons on the CCC unit to fo this)
7) CCC Controller. I find this works well with the build in apps like music and BT, also for navigating the Apps list. The best 'hidden' feature of this is to go 'Back' just click the control wheel to the left, took me a while to find this.. (Top Tip)
Hopefully some new information for this long running thread. I'll post an update if I upgrade to the 8.1 unit ;-)
Phil.
P.S. The SD card slot is on the front of the unit to the left.