It was a simpler time. The economy was the last thing on most people’s minds, Dane Cook was just a weird annoying guy from Waiting, Galvatron ruled over our comments section with an iron fist… And Garmin announced that it would enter the wireless arena with the soon-to-be released nuvifone. A lot has changed since then but one thing has remained constant over this historic 18-month period — no nuvifone. Believe it or not however, that might actually change in the near future. Despite having a bit of trouble spelling nuvifone, TWICE reports that Garmin is “getting very close” to a carrier launch here in the US. Why the massive delays? Garmin president and COO Cliff Pemble:
In the age of job losses, slowed progress and a floundering economy, tech is getting hit as hard as any industry. As stands to reason, we’ve seen slowed progress of late in terms of new technology coming to market. Sure there’s a nice looking piece of kit that surfaces every now and again but overall, the market lacks excitement. While ASUS’s upcoming Eee Keyboard might not be revolutionary per se, it is most definitely a breath of fresh air in what is otherwise a fairly stagnant market. We gave you the specs on this PC-in-a-keyboard back in January and for the most part, readers agreed: the Eee Keyboard is @&#%$!& cool. Now, according to Engadget’s Chinese counterpart, the sexy little PC will finally reach market by the end of June. We presume, unfortunately, that we’re looking at an initial launch confined to the Asian market but we really hope ASUS spreads this puppy out fast because we can’t get our grubby mitts on it soon enough. Look for official launch details to emerge from Computex during the first week of June.
So much for June. During a conference call with analysts last week, Garmin President and COO Cliff Pemble confessed that the nuvifone G60 will be delayed due to technical issues. Stating that creating a smartphone such as the nuvifone G60 is “complicated” and that “bringing one to market that’s built totally from the ground up on a custom Linux platform is not an easy task,” is somewhat of a valid excuse, but we mean c’mon — this handset was announced over 15 months ago and still hasn’t seen the light of day. And you know what that led to? Garmin-ASUS pimping the G60 like it was brand new because of their “strategic alliance”, which so far has amounted to nothing more than vaporware and lots of it. The nuvifone G60 is now slated for a release sometime in 2H09 meaning that Absolutely. No. One. Will. Care.
It may have taken a year and a half and a second official announcement but it looks like we may finally have word on when the Garmin-ASUS nuvifone is set to hit the streets. Of course we still don’t have any official pricing info or an exact launch date, but a Reuters article from this morning places the nuvifone G60 on store shelves in June. As for which store shelves the G60 will land on, it’s still looking like AT&T is where the smart money is though nothing has been confirmed. The article cites “a source with direct knowledge of the project” in stating that ASUS will issue its first LiMo-powered handset in June. As the M20 runs Windows Mobile it’s a safe bet to presume we’re talking about the G60 here. An AT&T-subsidized, LiMo-fueled, 3G-rocking navigation beast… We want it.
Garmin and Asus took advantage of Mobile World Congress back in February to announce the second nuvifone-branded handset that will reach market — the nuvifone M20. Despite the fact that the G60 has yet to hit store shelves, Garmin and Asus are seemingly anxious to display the fruits of their joint handset efforts and hey, were not going to complain. The M20 is tiiiiiiiny. Not so tiny that the duo couldn’t stuff a nice bright 2.8-inch VGA (640×480) touchscreen in there, but definitely small compared to other similarly-styled phones. As you would imagine, it’s all about navigation. Garmin uses an exclusive customized version of its GPS navigation software on its handsets — think of it as Garmin Mobile XT but tweaked and fully integrated into the OS. The OS on this little guy by the way, is Windows Mobile 6.1. We found that a bit odd considering Garmin whipped up its own Linux-based OS for the G60 but such is life. Garmin and Asus are actually planning to use a variety of different OSes for their devices, including Android. But we digress.
It wasn’t long ago when both Garmin and ASUS announced that they were teaming up to bring the nuvifone G60 to market and promised to out new models soon. True to their word, today the nuvifone M20 was treated to some press release love. Powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, the M20 touts a quad-band EDGE / tri-band 7.2Mbps HSPA chipset, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 4 to 8 GB of internal memory all under a 2.8″ VGA touchscreen display. Did we miss anything? Oh yes, GPS. Obviously with Garmin working on this thing its something of a sat nav monster and will be able to run your favorite LBS services, though if Garmin-ASUS had their way you’d be using Ciao! which sounds like their alternative to Google Latitude. Still, the M20’s GPS chip will work even without the phone itself being connected to a cellular network meaning you can mount the M20 with the included car dashboard mount (with power cable) and drive around like crazy in the Australian outback without having to fear getting lost. Now where’s that Android nuvifone at?
