Which Bloomin' AMI Lightning Cable?!?!?
 

I'm going crazy buying AMI cables at the moment. My 2008 S8 has MMI 2G and the older style AMI, with the little pocket to fit the device.

Before I bought the car, I bought a pack of two cables - a USB and a lightning cable. The USB works fine with a USB stick, so I'm confident the AMI is working but I wasn't so lucky with the lightning cable. It has a yellow collar/sleeve and it charges my iPhone 6+, but I get a message on the MMI display saying either the cable or device is not compatible.

OK, I've bought the wrong cable, I thought. After an evening of searching, I found that the Lightning cable with the while collar is the one I need. Shame, as it was a lot more expensive, but I took the plunge and bought it. No luck there either - this time the phone didn't even charge and there was no message on the MMI screen. It was like there was nothing plugged in.

Finally, I thought perhaps it was better sticking with cables that were made at the time the car was built, so I bought a 30-pin apple cable from eBay. It was in the seller's car but never used because he had a phone that required a different cable. To go along with this, I bought the official Apple 30-pin to Lightning adapter cable. No luck with that setup either - it behaved just like the white collar cable with nothing on the display and no charge to the phone.

So now, I'm exasperated. I've spent over £100 on cables and still don't have a working AMI.

Does anyone know what the proper cable I should be using? There are only two options left - the green and the black collar but I'd rather not complete the set before finding out which!

Also, did I miss a step somewhere? Do I need to do anything to register the cable with MMI? I did a reset with the last cable but none of the others.

Oh, I should have added that I tried the 30-pin connector without the Lightning adapter going into an old iPhone 4 and it still didn't work - no sign of charging power or signal.

Sorry Tony; not my area of expertise but you have got the AMI up to the latest firmware level, haven't you? That would be 0850 ...

Julian

you may have a D4 AMI lead, though they are backward compatible there are differences, not all functions may work correctly using the old cable in the D4

i presume it is the same or worse the oposite way round

Previous discussions on the topic:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8826

Emphasis seems to be ensuring its genuine kit....

Thanks for the replies, guys. Yes, all cables are genuine Audi or Apple. I was hoping to get at least one of them working by now!

That's an interesting point about the firmware version. I thought it updated when I upgraded the MMI to v5570 but it's worth checking.

Updating the software worked! Thanks so much Julian for the suggestion! :D

Now I just need to begin returning a stack of cables!