Garmin and ASUS Offically Team Up to Bring Nuvifone M20 to Market

February 12th, 2009 by Joanna Stern

nuvimlead The cell phone GPS news just keeps on coming today. Beyond TeleNav’s announcement this morning that its turn-by-turn direction software is now Android ready, Garmin and ASUS have annouced their partnership and its Garmin-Asus nuvifone M20. The “all-in-one phone, mobile web-browser and premium navigation system with a Windows Mobile operating system” will be on display next week at GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. LAPTOP’s very own Todd Haselton will be at the show and will be getting a demo of the device as soon as he touches down in Spain so stay tuned.

The first Garmin-Asus nuvifone M20 will be powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and combines a dual-band 3.5G/tri-band GSM and 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi connectivity. It sports a full QWERTY keyboard. Check out the images and full specs below.

On the GPS functionality front, navigation will link across applications such as calendar, contacts, email, and Internet applications. However the core navigation capability will be powered by a premium Garmin nuvi sat nav, and the phone comes preloaded with maps and points of interest for North America, Eastern and Western Europe, or other regions. Out of the box, the device is capable of turn-by-turn voice-prompted direction.

In addition the nuvifone M20 comes with a suite of applications called Connected Services that adds location intelligence to navigation, phone and browser functions. The list of applications includes content like real-time traffic information, White Pages, weather, flight status, local events, and movie times.

The nuvifone also includes a Google Latitude like service called Ciao! The location based application alerts you to your friends’ location and status by linking numerous location-centric social networks.

Garmin and ASUS expect to announce the nuvifone M20′s pricing and availability sometime during the first half of 2009.

OS: Microsoft Windows® Mobile Professional 6.1
NA: 3G 850/1900; 2G 850/1800/1900
Connectivity: 802.11 b/g WLAN; Bluetooth 2.0+EDR; mini USB 2.0
Display: 2.8″, VGA 640 x 480, 65K, TFT with touch lens
Display Resolution: 640 x 480
Dimensions: 95.3 x 52.5 12.8 mm
Weight: 99g (including battery)
Camera/Photos: 3MP camera, JPG format with auto-focus and geotagging. View photos in JPG/PNG/GIF/BMP format
Flash Memory: 4 GB or 8GB
Audio: Built-in microphone & speaker; Ring tone supported formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB
Headphone Jack: mini-USB
Video Playback: MPEG4/H.264/H.263/WMV @ 30fps VGA
Video Recording: MPEG4/H.263 @ 15fps QVGA; Streaming Audio/Video
Messaging: SMS / MMS / Email / MSN / Push Email (POP3/SMTP/IMAP) / Microsoft Exchange Email
Internet: OPERA browser, HTML, WAP 1.2.1/2.0
Sync: ActiveSync® for Outlook contacts calendar, media and documents
Productivity: Document viewing: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF
CPU: Qualcomm 7200A 528MHz
Battery: 920 mAh Lithium (replaceable)
Talk Time: 3G: 3 hours / 2G: 2.8 hours
Others: Accelerometer