My Infotainment unit is an MIB in my 2018 Kodiaq, I have Apple car play by cable. Is there any hope the firmware can be updated to connect to phone via Bluetooth without paying £200 to dealer , or is it not possible with this unit. If not are any of the dongles worth buying?

Transferring wired Car Play to wireless one cannot be done with firmware update.

 

Lots of Car Play dongles on market, I bet most of them are worth buying.

 

 

5 hours ago, StuartAK said:

Is there any hope the firmware can be updated to connect to phone via Bluetooth without paying £200 to dealer

 

I'm not sure paying £200 to the dealer will help either... wireless CarPlay is only available on the facelift models with the MIB3 units.

I bought a cheap AliExpress dongle which works fine for wireless Android Auto. But then I found - particularly with Waze - that  my phone got quite warm in my pocket and it drained the battery quite quickly. So I put the phone in the centre console with a USB lead to charge it, and might as well have run wired in the first place.

@Nimby

Yes, some cheap chinese ones can do it. 

I have 2 dongles in my car - one is Ottocast P3. Great thing, but it literally kills your phone connection to the car. I only use it when I need two navigation apps to run simultaneously as it allows to split the screen.

Another one is AAwireless, which I use daily. Works perfectly.

Wireless CarPlay Adapter for OEM... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BWD31MRT?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
 

I recently bought the above dongle and it is brilliant , uses Bluetooth to enable WiFi , the quality is great ,very fast with my 2018 Kodiaq hardware. All voice activation works fine. Only issue is induction charging on kodiaq  heats up phone to cutout temp on long journey.