Travel Technology - Garmin NuviFone

Garmin is now showing a GPS / Phone / 3G device. I think it's the phone anti-iPhone people were looking for.

http://www.garmin.com/nuvifone/

Images / Screenshots:
http://www.garmin.com/buzz/nuvifone/media_gallery.jsp

Press Release:
http://www.garmin.com/buzz/nuvifone/press_release.jsp

Wow. I want one, bad.

I have an iPod, but I never liked the iPhone, due to the exclusive agreement with AT&T and no discounts.

I've got a few Garmin GPS devices, and they work so well.

I want this thing, way more than the iPhone ever appealed to me.

I've never stood in line for a product, but I will stand 12 hours in line for this product if it were to debut through a brick & mortar place.

Nice!!

Cute, but nothing is known about the OS it runs on.

Does it support third party apps? Memory expandable? etc...

An HTC tilt with the Garmin mobile XT software essentially does the same, so Garmin better have something really cool to offer if they want this to succeed.

I'm hoping it will run Linux. :)

I'm hoping it will run Linux. :)

Why? There are already several phones that run Linux and none of them are very impressive. There isn't that anything you can do with Linux phones that you can't do with a palm, WM or Symbian device.

The regular Nuvi units already run Linux, so its not impossible that the Nuvifone will too.

Don't get me wrong; it's a nice looking phone, but it's going to have to be a lot more than just "nice" to sell.

Cute, but nothing is known about the OS it runs on.

Does it support third party apps? Memory expandable? etc...

An HTC tilt with the Garmin mobile XT software essentially does the same, so Garmin better have something really cool to offer if they want this to succeed.

Have you used Mobile XT? I haven't gotten it for my tilt because I heard it does not speak street names. Most of the time when I travel, I leave my GPS sitting in a cupholder and just listen.

Have you used Mobile XT? I haven't gotten it for my tilt because I heard it does not speak street names. Most of the time when I travel, I leave my GPS sitting in a cupholder and just listen.

Yeah, I've got it on my device. It's pretty decent but since I also carry a separate GPS unit I never really use it.

I still carry my Nuvi as well, although the microsoft live search program works wonders for looking up things Nuvi doesn't know about.

I still carry my Nuvi as well, although the microsoft live search program works wonders for looking up things Nuvi doesn't know about.

Plus, the voice recognition on Live Search is amazing.

Cute, but nothing is known about the OS it runs on.



Today in a surprise announcement in New York City, Garmin whipped out the nuvifone, a full-fledged GSM HSDPA smartphone built on its own operating system with GPS navigation at its core—but e-mail and web browsing close to its heart, and a camera built in too.

Today in a surprise announcement in New York City, Garmin whipped out the nuvifone, a full-fledged GSM HSDPA smartphone built on its own operating system with GPS navigation at its core—but e-mail and web browsing close to its heart, and a camera built in too.

Yeah, I don't buy that. Nobody makes an OS from scratch just for a phone. I'm sure they meant to say that the phone interface was their work, but the underlying OS is probably some kind of linux flavor.