Garminfone (T-Mobile)
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Gives correct driving directions, has lots of advanced navigation features, based on Android OS, an improvement over its predecessor in terms of apps.
Thumbs Down:
Multimedia capabilities could have been better, camera is subpar, low battery life
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM / UMTS
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband) / UMTS 1700/2100 (Dual Band)
Phone design: PDA
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Bluetooth, PGRS, microSD card slot.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Garminfone is 2.46 inches wide, 0.49 inches deep, 4.57 inches high and weighs 4.9 oz. Wireless interface options include IEEE 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.1. Additional features include microSD card slot, USB, EDGE Class 12, GPRS support, and AGPS. The phone runs on Android OS.
Razzle Dazzle:
Garminfone is a welcome change from its predecessor which had drab and blocky design. This new handset has a sexier and sleeker frame. The cell phone is 0.49 inch thick, 2.46 inches wide, 4.57 inches tall and weighs 4.9 ounces. This is more of a cellphone but if you want to use it as a navigator too, you wont have much to complain. The build quality is solid and on the back, there is a soft touch finish which gives it a nonslippery texture when you hold it in the hand.
Inside Dope:
Before this, we saw the Garmin-Asus’s first phone and we thought it was a total disaster. A GPS maker had made a cell phone and if you are going to use it just as a GPS device, it is ok but as a cellphone, it is horrible. This is a second attempt by the company; it is available through T-Mobile. The phone will be available in stores from June 9th and it costs $199.99 with a two year agreement and after $50 mail in rebate.
This phone is now better than its predecessor because Nuvifone’s issues have been taken care of here. The handset now run on Android platform and sports a sexy design. This device is now equally good as both navigator and smarphone. It may not be as good as T-Mobile MyTouch 3G Slide but if you travel a lot, then it will be hard for you to ignore this handset.
Garminfone has a 3.5 inch HVGA capacitive touch screen which gives a resolution of 320×480 pixels. We would have liked a bigger display considering the feature set of this phone but maps could still be seen clearly while we were driving. The screen is clear, vibrant and you can easily read it in daylight. Pinch to zoom function, seen on the iPhone, is supported here and apart from that, there is accelerometer and proximity sensor which makes this screen better than the previous model’s display. The orientation of the screen changes quickly and there are no freezing issues.
The touch screen of the Garminfone worked quite well in our lab tests. It was very much responsive and we could easily scroll through the lists. But, there is a big of lag for the onscreen keyboard. There is plenty of space between the buttons and we didn’t have many mishits but we had to wait for a while for the letter to show up on the screen. This made us go back time and again if there were any mistakes.
Below the Garminfone’s screen, there are four touch sensitive buttons – phone, menu, back and home. There is also a four way D-pad and all of these work really well. On the phone’s right, there is a camera capture/activation button and volume rocker. On the phone’s top, there is a power button. On the bottom there is microUSB port for syncing and charging the phone. Finally, on the back, you have the camera.
Garminfone comes with refrence material, wired headset, USB cord, 2 GB microSD card, car mount (windshield and dash), car charger, and AC adapter. Garminfone is based on Android 1.6 now but it still uses the proprietary user interface. We won’t complain about that here since it is quite user friendly. The home screen is divided in to two, on the left, there are navigation and phone apps where as on the right, you have customizable bar for scrolling through the apps. You also have a small tab which shows the main app menu when you tap it.
Garminfone was finally tested for call quality and it is good. There was almost no background noise which let us carry on conversations easily on the phone. On their side, our friends too told us the same thing. There was no background noise and the voice didn’t distort. Speakerphone call quality is a bit hollow, but still there is plenty of volume. For Bluetooth calls, we paired the phone up with Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active headphones and Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset. Call quality here too was pretty good.
Garminfone runs on 600 MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor which keeps the phone pretty fast. We didn’t have any issues for lag nor did the phone malfunction during our lab tests. We are yet to conduct battery tests for this device but we will update this section once we are done with it.
Nitty Gritty:
Garminfone is a huge improvement over it predecessor and we will recommend this handset if you are looking for a good smartphone with navigation features.
