a fully-featured Android smartphone that comes pre-packaged with a car kit and built-in Garmin map data so it can shine as an in-car GPS navigation system. I've spent several weeks using the A50 as my primary phone, and if you spend a lot of time on the road, this new nüvifone is built for you and does a very credible job.
US-based GPS specialists Garmin and Taiwanese electronics giant Asus have teamed up to produce a range of navigation-centric smartphones – and we've just spent a few weeks with the alliance's new flagship: the nüvifone A50. The A50 features a 3.5" capacitive touchscreen, a pre-loaded set of Garmin map data and a custom-tailored version of Android 1.6 that puts navigation front and center in the user interface.
You can understand Garmin wanting to get into the mobile phone handset market – smartphones are voraciously gobbling up entire sectors of mobile electronics. Now that every smartphone comes packaged with a GPS and compass, GPS companies have to take notice – get on the front foot or risk losing their relevance in the mass market.
Competitors like TomTom and Sygic have packaged their navigation software up in some fairly pricey iPhone apps – with a fair degree of success. Mobile giant Nokia announced earlier this year that all Nokia smartphones will get free turn-by-turn navigation bundled in. Perhaps the biggest looming specter for GPS-centric companies like Garmin has to be Google Maps, which is slowly starting to roll out a turn-by-turn navigation system on Android 2+ that's backed by vast data, mapping, satellite, search and street view capabilities that no GPS company can realistically hope to match.
The Google Maps Navigation solution is entirely cloud-based, though. So while it's immediate and constantly updated, it'll be slow or even completely accessible if you drive through an area with poor data coverage. And even in the city, this "free" solution could turn out to be costly, as pretty much everything, especially the more advanced features, will be taking chunks out of your data plan.
So the Garmin-Asus alliance makes quite a lot of sense – and after spending a few weeks with the nüvifone A50, the idea of a smartphone that's designed around its navigation capabilities makes a lot of sense too.