hi, thanks for the response.

I am mos def using the iPhone dongle... we can play the music just by hooking up the analog music connector up to the Aux input, but then we have to manually control the iPhone/iPod... the USB connection is what gives us the iDrive control that we want.

BTW, all these same ipod/iphone that don't work in the 2010 x5, all work just fine in my 09 M3. Go figure. I think there is a firmware problem in the X5, because the charging does work fine with all these devices from the USB connector, and like I said, the X5 tries to read the device, but ends up failing to complete the 'connection'.