Garmin Announces GPS Phone

Many high-end smart phones these days have GPS capability, but not many offer the same GPS experience that a full-fledged portable navigation system does. Now, GPS heavyweight Garmin has announced the nuvifone, a phone with GPS navigation as its core feature.

Will folks pay for such a thing? We think so. Especially since the nuvifone is long on other popular smart-phone features, like a 3.5 inch touch-screen — yes, like the iPhone — camera, video, email, IM, MP3 and MPEG4 playback, and more.

Still, this phone is all about the navigation; it even features a car dock that when you remove the phone from it automatically registers that location. So when you go to find your car in a big mall parking lot, the phone knows where it is. The nuvifone will also use Google local search, so it won’t rely on stale or limited points of interest.

Big questions remain, like price and which cellular carrier will be on board. Garmin says it will be on the market in the third quarter of 2008 — right in time for Christmas — and we’d guess prices will be in iPhone territory or higher. Check out more photos below and let us know if you would buy one.

Comments

[JP]

Depending how robust the nav is, I would be very interested.

[Peter Waitzman]

If it can integrate with enterprise email/calendaring, I'd be all over it. You be nice if it had a large hard drive and good video playback for airport downtime.

[Dave T.]

for me I don't care about the harddrive as long as it has a mini sd slot. those cards are getting bigger every day. I think they're at least at 4 GB now.

[Omar]

I would really consider buying this if it has a good web browser and good email. The iPhone seems like a better choice to me cause I can expect this phone to be more expensive then the iPhone.

[J]

So, are they going to incorporate the iphone unlocking thingy on this too?