Preview: Video Demo of the Garmin Nuvifone G60 and M20 GPS Phone

Overview:
If there’s one thing that seems to be hitting phone shops more and more, it’s yet another touch screen handset. So how do you differentiate from the pack? Well Garmin and Asus have teamed up to bring out the nuvifone G60 and nuvifone M20. Both are touchscreen handsets, but both are also first and foremost, Sat Navs. So will this blend come together as well as 25 year old whisky or is it a case of mixing oil and water? Let’s take a look.

Preview:
At the Gadget Show Live in Birmingham, we were lucky enough to get a hands-on demo of the new nuvifones, in particular the G60 which was the original nuvifone originally due to be released in 2007. It was delayed as Garmin and Asus were still getting the technicalities of the handset sorted out.

Now it looks like we’re going to be able to get our hands on these phones soon, with both handsets potentially due in shops by June this year.

The nuvifone M20 is a well-styled, easy to use handset powered by Windows Mobile. It features a 2.8 inch touchscreen, has a 3 mega-pixel camera and comes with 4GB of flash memory and a mini-USB headphone Jack- not great then for plugging into your usual headphones.

For those of you who, like myself, aren’t a fan of the usually sluggish Windows platform, the nuvifone G60 is powered by Linux. With a 3.5 inch touchscreen, it’s a bit easier on the eye when you’re using it as a sat nav in your car.

Similarly to it’s smaller cousin though, the G60 also has a 3 mega-pixel camera as well as 4GB of memory.
It does thankfully however, have a standard 2.5mm headphone jack.

Both cameras come with auto-focus and geo-tagging which can be teamed up with the “Panoramio” application that navigates to get-tagged photos sorted by distance from your current location.

I mentioned that the differentiating factor of the nuvifone range to other smartphones on the market is the fact that GPS isn’t an afterthought on these handsets. They are in fact designed to be used as your usual car sat nav, and can be mounted onto your front windscreen as is usual for a standard GPS unit.

The home screens of both handsets offers large “Search” and “View Map” icons, showing that map-reding is as integral a part of the handset as the ability to call your mum.

But doesn’t everyone already have a sat nav in their Ford Mondeo? Why get a handset that doubles-up on this functionality? Well this is the question we put to Garmin, who informed us that only 1/3 of people in the UK already have a sat nav, which is a figure far below what we had expected.

The beauty of having easy-to-use GPS on your phone is that you have ready access to a map when you looking for somewhere on foot. How many times have you caught a train to a new town only to spend 30 minutes to find the cinema/ restaurant/ random other meeting place that was only a 5 minute walk in the other direction from the station?

Both the G60 and M20 also feature “Ciao”, which is a location based social networking platform. It’s a pretty cool stalking app that lets you see where your friends are and keeps you up to date on their status.

There is also the “White Pages” app which lets you search for and navigate to listed people and businesses. You can categorise your search by name, business, or phone number.

The last noteworthy application is “Flight Status” which is a bit of a necessity for the weary business traveller. Flight Status (as the name suggests) gives you access to flight departure and arrival times and gate information from a range of airports around the world.

The two handsets look to appeal to different markets, with the M20 noticeably sleeker in design which would appeal to the business user or anyone else who’s looking to use it as a phone first before turning it landscape as a GPS unit.

Conversely, the G60 really is a sat nav first and a phone second which sounds a bit topsy-turvy but Garmin have a theory that people who don’t already have a sat nav are those who may not be the most up-to-date with the tech world. Garmin believe that by giving them a device with the comfortable facilities of a mobile phone, it can gently ease these traditional paper map readers to the world of “turn left in 800 metres”.

Price and network carrier are still under wraps, but we think the new nuvifone series stands out enough from the overcrowded touchscreen smartphone market to be able to make a name for themselves.

For a better look at the functionality G60 check out our video taken at the Gadget Show live in April 2009.

The Gaj-It Verdict:
Design: 8/10
Usability: 9/10
Features: 9/10
Value: TBA

We Say:
The nuvifone series is Garmin’s first step into the mobile phone world, and they’ve come up with a handset that looks to equal the best. I’m personally glad that there’s a Linux option to the Windows Mobile platform, but whether Linux proves to be responsive and reliable, we’ll only know from a proper test-run. Convergent technology has taken another step with the nuvifone handsets, and I can’t wait to see where Garmin go from here.