Garmin Enters Mobile Phone Market - Meet Nüvifone

[Darren]

Garmin announced yesterday its entrance into the mobile phone market with the nüvifone, a touchscreen multi-function solution that combines cellphone, web browser and satellite navigator into a single handheld device. Sharing many design features with modern PDA's and a hint of iPhone the nüvifone looks great.

“The nüvifone is an all-in-one device offering unmatched integration of utility and function in a single mobile device,” said Cliff Pemble, Garmin’s president and COO. “This is the breakthrough product that cell phone and GPS users around the world have been longing for — a single device that does it all.”

Hmm, all sounds revolutionary if you believe the PR spiel but it offers nothing more than any of the GPS equipped PocketPC Phone Edition devices available today except perhaps the Garmin brand and their navigation software. Readers may recall that this is not the first time Garmin have dipped their toes into this market segment. They had a GPS/Cellphone device some years back that sank without trace and of course the PalmOS based iQue PDA.

But credit where it is due, there is a huge demand for web and data connected navigation devices and executed well it could be a superb solution. The key is good hardware and well integrated software. Imagine a Google Search for a business that can integrate such that any result is piped to the GPS side as your destination?

Click here to read the full press release and see more images.

Post your comments in this thread.
_________________
Darren Griffin

[mikealder]

Neat looking device but it is like the iFone in more than just appearance, being a bespoke OS you cannot put any other software on the device, this is a real shame as the product looks great - I just wouldn't want to be limited to what was installed on the day of purchase - Mike

[EddyDC]

Let the cobbler stick to his last. This results in devices that has a lot of features and fails on navigation.
These days, you won't find any device that focusses on the main purpose: making navigation as good as possible.

[adamf]

wow and 3g

[petepda]

Just read about this on the Modaco website. Couple of promo vids below:

http://www.clipta.com/play?v=5d161a08e86b144065bc
http://www.clipta.com/play?v=21fa4ac5414db98f542d

[MaFt]

there are some photo's of the nuvifone on the blog pages on the main page of this site

MaFt

[tsdinos]

I believe that nowadays all computer-like handheld devices can do everything.....but not very good!

Its all about processing power, RAM memory, overall storage capacity.

I hope Garmin thinks about that and make nuvifone great!

Im very happy with my new nuvi 760 though and Im not yet convinced about how good and reliable these "can do all" devices are

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