Garmin Nuvifone. Watch out iPhone...

Well well well.

Guess who is joining the big boys? One of the most prominent GPS manufacturers in the world, Garmin, is rolling out something called the Nuvifone. And it looks good. Damn good.

For people who are into GPS devices, your research would inevitably have turned up the Nuvi series from Garmin. I persoanlly have a Nuvi 610 portable GPS. The Nuvi series GPS is hugely successful. What makes it so good? It's very simple.

Yes. It's very simple.

The ease of the interface is pretty much idiot proof and is a pleasure to use. All touch screen, poke-and-it's-done type of interface. While driving, there's no better solution.

The Nuvifone pretty much has the same iPhone-style, hardly-any-buttons, poke-and-it's-done interface. Admittedly, from the press photos, it does look less "sophisticated" than the iPhone.




The Nuvifone may not be as pretty, but according to Garmin, this device has some specs that most people wished iPhone had in the first place. Let's see:
1) 3.5" screen
2) 3.5G
3) multi-tasking
4) built-in GPS, which knowing Garmin, will be killer
5) video recording

Sounds yummy doesn't it?

Here are some quotes from Garmin's website:

"...nüvifone, an all-in-one, sleek and slim, touchscreen device that combines a premium phone, mobile web-browser, and cutting-edge personal navigator..."

"The all touchscreen device is the first of its kind to integrate premium 3.5G mobile phone capability with an internet browser, data connectivity, personal messaging, and personal navigation functions in one device. When powered on, the 3.5-inch touchscreen display reveals three primary icons — “Call,” “Search,” and “View Map” which allow the user to effortlessly master the nüvifone’s functions."

"The nüvifone is Garmin’s first device to include Google local search capability, which harnesses the vast point of interest information available from the world wide web."

"The built-in camera allows individuals to take a picture that will automatically be tagged with the exact latitude and longitude reference of where the image was taken. The user may then save the image so they can navigate back to the location, or email the image to a recipient who can navigate directly to the location."

"Other multimedia functions of the nüvifone include a built-in video camera, MP3 and MPEG4/AAC."




Here are some more pics and screen shots from Garmin's webby:













So what OS does it run? There's no mention of it anywhere but I'm guessing it should be Garmin's own proprietary OS? If that's the case, there won't be much fun trying to put stuff into it.

Having no hardware keyboard ensures that text input will be similar to the iPhone's, which is not too good.

But if they get all the basics right, I'll be in the queue for one.

Look out Apple, Nuvifone is coming...


http://www8.garmin.com/nuvifone/