Here is another iPhone competitor. Garmin, the leading GPS device maker is bringing out a touch-screen phone, which, theoretically at least, beats the iPhone by including GPS, 3.5G connectivity and the ability to record video: say hello to the (weirdly named) nüvifone.
The only problem: it won’t be out before September ‘08. By then, the “iPhone 2” would be probably already out.
All the screenshots and “photos” in this phone’s media gallery are just photoshop/3D modeling jobs. When the iPhone was announced, Steve Jobs had a working model in his hand. But Garmin have not learned the lesson yet and expect people to get excited by 3D mockups.
Having said that, Garmin is not a dumb company. Let’s hope they have at least learned the iPhone’s biggest lesson: the user interface experience is CRITICAL.
The screenshots of the phone’s interface reveal a lot of iPhone imitation (without the usual Apple polish):
Not too promising.. And where is the keyboard?
We’ll have to wait 9 months to see how the nüvifone turns out in the end.
All of this makes me even happier about my Nokia N95 which ALREADY has all the features above, minus the touch screen, of course.
A glaring omission in the N95 is that the pictures you take are not geo-tagged. I think this has been fixed in the N95 8GB and the N82.
But, the biggest flaw with Nokia’s smart phones remains the clunky, 90’s-style interface design of its implementation of Symbian. I mean COME ON!
2008 should see Nokia coming out with a new S60 touch screen device. Nokia is also seems to be working hard on touch screens with tactile feedback, an innovation I hope to see implemented on their upcoming phones.
I am also eagerly awaiting the first phones to implement Google’s Android platform. It’ll be an exciting mobile year!
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Comments
3 responses to “iPhone+GPS+Video Camera+3.5G=Garmin nüvifone!”
My brother owns the Garmin Nuvi (the GPS predecessor to the phone). It’s quite impressive. So impressive, in fact, that if I still lived in the States, I wouldn’t hesitate to snatch one up. So because I am so impressed with the Nuvi, I have high hopes for the Nuvifone.
I never even knew Garmin made phones.
I wonder what carrier in the US has Garmin Phones?
I don’t know why everybody is trying to design phones exactly like the iPhone, they all claim they are going to make a better phone than apple’s, but all they do is to make a similar design of the device and add the missing features in it, how ever when the iPhone came out, apple didn’t add new features that didn’t exist before; touch screen, music player, maps, email,… that was already old school but all they did was is putting it all together in a very user friendly and innovative way, in order to beat the iPhone, just come up with a totally new and useful way to use the device no matter how long it will take.