Mini Connected hooks up your iPhone

Show of hands: How many of you Mini Cooper drivers also own an iPhone?

That's what we thought. Mini knows its target market and proves it with the new Mini Connected smartphone integration technology, which works exclusively with the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

As smartphones and apps explode in popularity, Mini joins the ranks of carmakers that think that whoever provides the best in-vehicle interfaces for these will gain the competitive advantage.

Mini Connected talks to the smartphone apps on your iPhone, displaying them in the "Mini interface" and allowing the driver to operate the apps without having to touch the phone.

Lest you confuse it with Ford Sync and its AppLink functionality, Mini Connected employs a manual interface consisting of a small metal joystick, the design of which was cribbed from the side-mirror adjuster on a 1982 Chevrolet Caprice. Limited voice commands are involved, so drivers are stuck with one hand on the wheel and one on the remote.

Drivers can access their music and video libraries, plus Facebook, Twitter, Web radio and Google search on the interface. Though tweeting while driving certainly isn't the best idea, there are some safeguards in place for these features. Twitter feeds can be read aloud by the car's voice control, Facebook status updates can be created with simple templates such as "Driver is on the way to X with Y minutes to go," and video can only be accessed when the car is in park. But we wonder, do these features belong in a car to begin with?

"We've spent a lot of time ensuring that our widget set is automotive grade," says Rob Passaro, chief engineer for BMW Group Technology. The controller can be reached and the screen can be viewed while maintaining proper driving position, and the setup of the interface is very readable and requires a low cognitive load to understand, he says.

As part of its foray into the app-tastic smartphone culture, Mini Connect has partnered with Pandora so that all 2011 Minis equipped with Mini Connected will be able to stream and control the personalized Internet radio system through the interface.

Not enough subscriptions in your life? Get ready for Mog in your Mini. For $9.99 a month, the Mog app claims to "stream unlimited, ad-free music from any artist, album or song at any time from virtually anywhere" at 320 kbps for primo sound quality. If it sounds like Pandora with some extra options, all for a whole lot of extra money, we hear you. But the kicker is that Mog lets users store music on their devices so they can listen even when a Web connection is unavailable. Basically, it's like a huge cloud-based MP3 library you can take with you.

Another element of the system is the Minimalism Analyzer, which gathers information on the current trip and works with the iPhone to assess driving style and make suggestions on how to drive more efficiently. Efficient drivers are awarded points, which are uploaded to an online leader board.

Got a Droid or some other smartphone OS? You can still enjoy Bluetooth connectivity and the like, plus Mini has tentative plans to expand the system to other users in time.

As with so many in-vehicle infotainment systems, Mini Connected works well once you're used to it. Therein lies the rub: No one has yet created an intuitive interface. There's still a learning curve, and there's still the danger of sideswiping a cyclist while scrolling through your playlists.

By Julie Alvin and Andy Stoy