Garmin says sales of portable GPS systems, or portable navigation devices (PNDs), will be flat in 2009. In a phone conference with analysts, Gramin president and COO Cliff Pemble described 2009 as a “difficult year,” according to TWICE. Garmin has about half the U.S. market share and dominates even more at the high end, although the market is skewed 85-15 toward lower end PNDs, Garmin says. While flat sales are bad news for PND-makers, it’s good news for customers who’ll see better pricing from makers who remain in the business, as well as great close-out prices from those who drop out. The unspoken problem: A lot of people bought a first GPS 2-4 years ago, upgraded 1-2 years ago, and don’t see the reason to upgrade quite so soon again.
Why it matters: You’ll buy better portable GPS units at lower prices this year, if you’ve still got a job. And flat PND sales and reduced prices adds pressure on automakers to find ways to sell onboard navigation for $1,000 not $1,500.
The GPS circuitry in the iPhone 3G could be used to do more — a lot more, in fact — than it currently does, and it looks like Apple might have an eye on an angle most people wouldn’t have considered (in other words, something other than turn-by-turn). Digging through iPhoto ’09’s innermost sanctums has apparently revealed references to some sort of asynchronous geotagging capability, whereby selecting locations from an app on the phone (or iPod touch, as the case may be) could be transferred directly to iPhoto and associated with events — perfect for shooting with, say, a real camera while toting your phone in your pocket. Of course, the capability is purely vestigial for now — no announcement has been made, and there’s no way for users to access this directly — so Apple could’ve spiked it or has it queued up for a future firmware update. Time will tell.
GiSTEQ — the GPS phototagger folks — are back on the scene with TripBook, a novel approach to the art of mileage tracking. The idea is simple: You plug the device into your vehicle’s lighter, at which point it powers up and preserves all the sordid details of your journey — time, distance, route and so forth. Once your saga concludes (or, as Joseph Campbell once put it, when you return “to the world of common day”) the data can be exported to your PC (sorry, Mac users) for creating IRS-compliant mileage reports. The device, vehicle adapter, USB cable and all pertinent software and manuals are available from the manufacturer for $99.
Here’s a little tidbit to start your morning: According to the New York Times, one year ago today, Toshiba, creator of HD DVD, conceded to Sony’s rival Blu-ray format. Take a look at Gearlog’s deals for Thursday, February 19 (especially the first one!):
1. Save some big bucks on a three-pack of Blu-ray discs from Amazon.com today. Choose from the Action Bundle, which includes Casino Royale, Black Hawk Down, and Hellboy; the Love and Marriage Bundle, with Made of Honor, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Across the Universe; or the Comedy Bundle, with Superbad, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and Talladega Nights. Normally all three Blu-ray discs would come out to about to be as much as $117, but with this offer, you’ll save 65 percent. The deal ends today, so get on it.
2. MacMall is knee-deep in its Apple Blowout Deals with up to 83 percent off of select Macs, iPods, software, accessories, and more. Save up to $84 on MacBooks, $1,044 on MacBook Pros, and $1,194 on MacBook Airs. Also, orders of over $49 get free shipping with this mail-in rebate. The sale ends on February 24. [Via Dealnews.com]
3. If you’re the type of person who gets lost all the time while driving, but is too proud to ask for directions, you’re in luck. Best Buy is having a sale of 10 to 33 percent off of select GPS receivers. Get the Garmin Nuvi 255 GPS in Piano Black for $179.99 (normally $229.99).
Clarion’s ClarionMiND MID / PND has been a long time coming but, with the first few non-3G-equipped units now out there in the wild, we’re finally starting to get some reviews of the device, one of which comes from the folks at Mobile Tech Review. As you might expect, there’s quite a bit of compromises to be found both as an MID and a GPS device, although it does seem to be considerably more well-suited to the latter task than the former. The biggest drawback on that front, it seems, is a weak built-in speaker that may not be powerful enough to overcome road noise. Things seem to be decidedly more lackluster when used as an MID, however, a situation that isn’t helped by its underpowered 800MHz Z500 processor, its 850mAh battery, or its custom Linux distribution, which handles the basic internet-browsing tasks just fine but makes it difficult to install any third party apps. Hit up the link below for the complete rundown.
For those less interested in QWERTY keyboards and more inclined for something navigation-centric, Nokia‘s announced the 6710 Navigator slider and 6720 classic handset. Both phones dedicated GPS service with real time drive-and-walk navigation, and full regional maps. Outside of that, you’ve got a 5 megapixel camera to capture the memory of our adventure. The 6720 is coming out second quarter of this year for 245 euros, while the 6710 Navigator will be popping in third quarter for 300 euros.
Update: More details from the fact sheets. The 6720 classic’s got a 2.2-inch TFT QVGA, music player with support for MP3, AAC and WMA, FM tuner, and a dual-LED flash. Standby time is 20.5 days and talk time is 5 / 8.5 hours for 3G and GSM, respectively. The 6710 Navigator’s sporting 2.6-inch outdoor optimized QVGA with ambient light detector, support up to 16GB microSD, 18.5 day standby time and 4.5 / 7.5 hour talk time for 3G and GSM, respectively. Both handsets feature built-in A-GPS and Nokia Maps 3.0, a web browser and Carl Zeiss optics for the 5MP camera.
It’s not that hybrid GPS systems are all that new, it’s just that most are working totally under the radar. Skyhook’s hoping to get its rendition out in the open a tad more via a new partnership with Texas Instruments. The company’s XPS hybrid positioning system is now cleared for integration within TI’s NaviLink and WiLink mobile solutions, though there’s no mention made of who all is drooling to get this into their phones. In short, Skyhook‘s XPS works by detecting WiFi hotspots, raw GPS readings and cellular IDs, and then comparing that information against a known database of geo-located points. In theory, this stuff could totally amp up the location abilities of most any handset, but in reality, we wouldn’t be surprised to see it get swept away and forgotten just like the eerily similar announcement between Skyhook and Broadcom. Full release is after the break.
I got some quality time with a Garmin Nuviphone G60, riding around Barcelona in the back of a jet-black Mercedes limo. My hands-on impression: This smartphone-meets-GPS-meets-media-player feels like a winner.
I don’t know what it really is: A cellphone that is a GPS or a GPS that is a cellphone. Of course, the cellphone has everything you can expect from a such a device these days, including a 3-megapixel camera (with a real shutter button, like it should be) and a music player, everything tied to the GPS. This seems to be the main point of the Garmin G60: Everything revolves around geo-location.
Physically, the Garmin G60 has a good size: A good feeling on your hand, thicker than you-know-who, but light and comfortable. The thing is made to be integrated on your car dashboard—it comes with a cradle with a suction cup—but it works in your hand as a smartphone just fine.
The first thing I noticed was the complete lack of buttons, except for volume and camera shutter on the right side. On the front, there are no physical buttons whatsoever, just a nice, colorful 3.5-inch touchscreen.
As you can see in the video, the Linux-based operating system is quite agile and appeared solid, although the full HTML browser stalled forever trying to load a page-which is probably a fault of the 3G connection rather than the G60 itself, even while it is still a beta prototype.
The interface seems polished, it feels fast and responsive, very bright and clean, with colorful icons. It’s centered around three main icons, which I’m sure are the ones Garmin wants to emphasize: Call, Search, and View Map. Call and View Map are quite straightforward, with Search giving you several options, from consulting the six million points of interests—already pre-loaded with the North America or European maps built-in the G60—to the on-the-fly Google local search application. This section feels very much like one of their previous GPS, giving you access to Favorites, Contact, or Recently Found addresses, and allowing to visit or calling any place on one click.
On the side (or bottom, if you are in landscape mode-the Garmin G60 has an accelerator to know this, although it didn’t feel very sensitive while I was trying it) you can see a scrolling list of icons, which gives you access to the other features of the G60, from the camera to the web browser to the Ciao! geolocation based social service to widgets like weather. While the main three buttons can’t be changed for the ones in the side list, the whole user interface is well organized and easy to use.
My impression from the hands-on is that Garmin has made what they know to do best—a GPS—and they combined it with a 3G smartphone is a smooth way. The result is a nicely balanced unit that has the advantage of having everything you expect in a GPS and all the features you expect in a modern smartphone, all under an easy to use interface.
We will give you a more extensive verdict once we get a final unit, which is supposed to arrive in the first half of 2009.
I guess that if the Garmin Nuviphone G60 is a GPS smartphone, the Garmin Nuviphone M20 Windows Mobile is a smartphone GPS. It’s quite smaller than the G60, but the demo didn’t work quite right.
It seems that the Garmin Nuviphone M20 we tried—which still doesn’t have a release date—is an early prototype. As a result, we couldn’t try the customized GPS-based search and maps programs: Every time we tried, it kept giving a location services initialization problem. We were told look very similar to the G60, but you just can’t see it in the video. The rest of the phone-developed by Asus-seems OK after our brief hands-on. Garmin has created special skins to mask the furrible Windows Mobile interface.
Physically, the cellphone feels light and compact on your hand, with a nice, colorful finish. The fact that it requires a stylus—even while you can actually use your finger or nail, if you are Ming of Mongo—made it quite awkward to me, although that may just be my personal preference after hours of iPhone fingering.
We will have to wait for a more mature unit to give you our full impressions.
After learning that TeleNav would be releasing dedicated turn-by-turn GPS navigation for one of our favorite devices — the G1 — we got more than a little excited. Thankfully, we’ve had a chance to take the software for a spin before its February 24th release date, and these are our findings.
The software is really snappy, snappier than a lot of dedicated GPS units we’ve used.
Finding satellites can be a major pain sometimes, and the signal can drop while you’re driving (see video), which could be a major headache if you’re on a trip and you really don’t know where you’re going.
The app doesn’t seem to eat up much space (it occupies 4MB on the device), so it appears to be pulling map data OTA. That’s a good thing if you’re worried about filling up your G1, but bad if you need info quickly or you’re not in a data-gettin’ spot.
We experienced a crash while it was fetching satellites. The software is still being tweaked from what TeleNav tells us, so we’re going to assume that won’t be an issue once it’s on the market.
The traffic, restaurant, and gas station services are top notch and pretty speedy (once it figures out where you are). Since a lot of GPS units aren’t pulling live data on surrounding businesses or traffic / weather info, this is a nice touch.
The speaker volume on the G1 is probably a bit quiet if you’re cranking on a highway — that could be an issue if you’re really relying on what Stephen King calls “the GPS voice.”
As expected, it’s a power hog, so plan on having an adapter in the car if you’re going to get any use out of this.
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