Garmin-Asus nüvifone G60 hands-on
Garmin and Asus have teamed up to make GPS-enabled smart phones. There are two -- the M20 and the G60 -- and we've just spent some time with the latter
As we were being kicked out of Mobile World Congress for the day, we legged it to the Garmin-Asus stand and had a quick play with one of the brand-new sat-nav handsets from the joint venture between PC maker Asus and GPS specialist Garmin, the G60.
We wrote about the quad-band G60's announcement last week, and feared it would be a chunky mother lover. Which it is. But it actually felt smashing, and for a resistive touchscreen handset, it was more responsive than we were expecting, even with our meaty man fingers. The screen itself has a matte finish, rather than the usual gloss we see on resistive screens.
It runs Linux, as opposed to the Windows Mobile seen on its brother the M20. It's much more of a GPS system than a smart phone, although it does the whole calling, emailing, Web browsing and texting thing. It's also got 3.6Mbps HSDPA and Wi-Fi data connections, 4GB of storage for media, stereo Bluetooth, a really pleasant interface and a crisp 91mm (3.6-inch) 272x480-pixel display.
It's a fully fledged sat-nav system for in-car cradling, and offers the 'Ciao!' system for looking up your friends' locations. An autofocusing 3-megapixel camera hooks up to the GPS system for geo-tagging any snaps you take on the go.
Truth be told, like the HTC Touch Cruise we covered earlier, it's definitely one for posh cabbies rather than any of us normal folk. It'll be on sale within the first half of this year if you consider yourself a posh cabbie.