Why You Can Trust CNET Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50 review: Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50
Road warriors will be thrilled with the mix of a great GPS and a decent smartphone, though its dull design will struggle to catch the eye of the fashion-conscious.
One thing we loved about the last Garmin-Asus Android phone we reviewed was its budget price tag. Unfortunately, the A50 doesn't share this trait with the A10; in fact at AU$49 per month on a two-year contract, the A50 competes directly with the likes of the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S. Can its built-in maps save it from mediocre comparisons?
Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Design
Like the Volvo it's likely to reside in, the Garmin-Asus A50 is a smartphone whose designers have prioritised function over form. Its plastic chassis lacks the polish of today's high-end smartphone finishes, but we find we still quite like what we see. Its curved battery cover is ergonomic and its soft-touch plastic is nice to hold. The 3.5-inch screen seems adequate for day-to-day use and for its dual-role as in-car navigation assistant. In fact, the only element of the design that we really dislike is the capacitive touch buttons below the screen, which can be tricky to avoid, especially when holding the phone on its side.
The A50 comes with a decent range of in-car accessories in its sales package, including a plastic windscreen mount and a cigarette-lighter charging adapter. For standard charging you'll use a mini-USB port on the base of the device, but once attached to the mount charging is deferred to a side-positioned proprietary port, much like a stand-alone GPS unit.
Garmin includes a dedicated camera key alongside the standard volume rocker, but the 3-megapixel camera on the rear lacks the support of a flash for low-light situations. Garmin wisely includes 4GB of on-board memory, though you'll only have access to about 3GB of this memory with the rest taken up by the pre-installed maps.
Baby, drive my car
Not surprisingly, the standout feature in this smartphone is the Garmin mapping software featuring turn-by-turn directions with street name notifications. Not only do these maps stand head and shoulders above other mapping solutions found on smartphones, but it also supersedes many stand-alone GPS alternatives thanks to the built-in speakerphone and web-assisted travel data. The combination of a phone, web connectivity and maps is a potent mix for anyone who does business from the comfort of their cars.
The home-screen user-interface (UI) design leans towards the mapping component of this unit. Of the three large home-screen icons, two of them take you to the maps. Once there, you can easily punch in a new destination or search points of interest for good food, entertainment, cheap petrol or a vast range of other items.
The car mount included with the phone seems minimal during its construction, but once mounted we found it secure during our tests. Best of all, when you arrive at your destination you unclip the phone and take it with you, eliminating the temptation for thieves to bust in and snatch it for a quick sale.
Yesterday's Android
The smartphone element of the A50 is powered by Android version 1.6, a version of the platform that was released late last year. Since 1.6 the Android system has been updated three times to its current 2.2 release. The significance of this is that each new version of Android has brought with it an increase in speed and stability, and for Garmin to lag behind with the older version of the platform is disappointing from an end-consumer perspective.
One of the key reasons that Garmin would have opted to stick with the older Android would be due to the extensive customisation the company has applied to the operating system — Android is almost unrecognisable behind all the unique graphics. These custom graphics won't appeal to everyone, however; people have likened the aesthetic of the Garmin system skin to Windows 95 and older. This is an interface that reminds us more of a GPS than a slick smartphone UI.
Performance
Complaints about the older Android version aside, the A50 delivers decent performance across most areas of the smartphone experience. The browser is reasonably punchy, with fast multi-touch zooming, application load times are fast enough to not interrupt your work flow and the GPS software calculates routes swiftly enough to keep you on track. We managed up to two working days between battery charges with moderate use, but the range of charging options should mitigate most people's concerns about battery life.
Call quality is acceptable, but not outstanding, though the speakerphone volume gets a big tick from us. Our test car isn't particularly noisy in the driver's seat, and as such we managed to carry on conversations easily while driving. The on-screen keyboard is fine for composing short messages, emails and Twitter posts, but it's far from the best option available to users of the Android platform.
Overall
The Garmin-Asus A50 has a very clear audience, and we definitely think it will appeal to the road warrior who needs both GPS navigation and smartphone connectivity. Outside of this specific segment the A50 will struggle in an increasingly aggressive fashion-conscious smartphone buyers market. GPS navigation has never been a priority for the majority of smartphone owners, and its functional appearance stands Buckley's chance of winning over those enamoured with the designer flare of phones from Apple and HTC.