Garmin Partner with ASUS - nuvifone coming next month

[Darren]

Garmin have announced a strategic alliance with ASUSTek Computer Inc. Combining Garmin's navigation expertise with the telephony expertise of ASUS they will manufacture and distribute a range of co-branded mobile phone products.

The range will be known as the Garmin-Asus nuvifone series and they plan to being a number of devices to market this year beginning with a new nuvifone model which will be announced at the Mobile World Congress trade show taking place in Barcelona, Spain, Feb 16th-19th.

Garmin have been working with ASUS for over a year on the initial nuvifone device (known known as the Garmin-Asus nuvifone G60) that has already been seen in the flesh at trade shows and they hope to be able to offer a broader product line with shorter lead times as a result of this partnership.

All the nuvifone models will be LBS-centric devices fusing navigation and GSM data links to create a fully 'connected' device. They will all offer the same 
turn-by-turn, voice-prompted navigation features found on high-end Garmin portable navigation devices (PND), pre-loaded maps and POIs that allow drivers to quickly find addresses, other locations such as restaurants, parking, petrol stations etc

In addition, the connected devices include access to online POIs through internet enabled local search and will also feature Ciao!, a social networking application that bridges the gap between multiple location based social networks and integrates them into one device.


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Darren Griffin

[mikealder]

What Operating System does it use WM6,1 or 7 / Android or their own? - Mike

[Darren]

[mrsmith76]

Sounds like Garmins bottom has dropped out with all these late "alliances" I thought it was going to be a dedicated Garmin unit rather than a mixture of all and sundry?! Have they struggled to create what they wanted by themselves? I've had a number of Asus laptops which have been far from good quality so I'm a little worried this might filter down to this new product.

[chastreo]

[Darren]

[swing]

Mike,

My understanding is that the G60 is using a Linux OS "developed" in house at Garmin, and that later in 2009 Garmin-Asus will announce more nuviphones running Android. When they stated they were planning on releasing Android devices, they took pains to state the first nuviphone would not be Android based. Some of the recent Nuvi devices are linux based, as opposed to their traditional proprietary OS, so I suspect they built on that for the G60.

So, in the short term, we now have a WM device and a Linux device, and should see an Android device or two later this year.
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[alix776]

so its really nothing that special as it will be running a version of xt which is available currently for windows mobile and symbian s60 or am i mistaken thats what it lookls like if you strip away the maketing hype
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currently using aponia truck navigation on windows phone. Good bye IOS don't let the door hit you on the way out .

Oh the joys of being a courier.
device Lumia 950 xl

[Darren]

Well it's integrated, has a number of live search service and AIUI this is a more fully featured app than XT.
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Darren Griffin

[MaFt]

xt has the live services too...

i agree with alix - the m20 (win mobile one) looks like a phone sold with garmin xt...!

MaFt

[Darren]

And I've just noticed both you AND Alix are posting in the wrong thread
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Darren Griffin

[MaFt]

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