Garmin nuvifone: Hands-on with the sat-nav phone

By Andrew Lim on 15 February 2008, 4:45pm

4Pages

1
2
3
4

After making our way up to the furthest hall away from civilisation, we finally managed to track down Garmin's nuvifone at the Mobile World Congress to spend some time with it.

The first thing that hit us about Garmin's touchscreen phone is how it's not as chunky as we first assumed when we saw leaked pictures of it online. Size aside, we were most interested in finding out what it was like to use, but we hit a problem because Garmin didn't have any working models.

Bizarrely, it seems that Garmin HQ didn't think it necessary to send working handsets along to the Mobile World Congress -- it's only the largest mobile phone event in the world.

All we can tell you at this point is that it has a nice rubbery finish to it, doesn't feel too thick and if the icons on the start page are anything to go by, could be easy to use. Insanely, there's a 2.5mm jack instead of a 3.5mm one, so it's not exaclty an iPhone killer -- in the music stakes at least.

Jacks aside, the nuvifone boasts HSDPA (3.5G), Wi-Fi and GPS. You can use the 3-megapixel camera on the back to take photos, and alongside the built-in GPS, it will automatically geotag them, similar to the Nokia N78 -- which means you can find out exactly where you took a photo.

There's no set date on availability and we're not sure which network is going to pick it up. We were told UK networks are interested in it, so watch this space. Click on the next page for more pictures and information about the Garmin nuvifone. -Andrew Lim