Published on 14-08-2010 01:56 AM
Number of Views: 1223
Instead of a smartphone with sat-nav tacked on, the Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50 is true hybrid device.
Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50
The nuvifone A50 calls on Garmin's sat-nav heritage, but it's also a smartphone running a highly customised version of Android 1.6. Garmin-Asus has developed a car-friendly homescreen, with large icons for launching the phone, sat-nav and mapping features. There's also pop-out sidebar offering links to all the usual Android apps.
You can't change the home screen layout, but you can access the Android widgets by pressing and holding the Home button. Apart from the home screen, the A50 is still a fully customisable Android phone - although the menus have been stripped down a little compared to your stock-standard Android phone. The fact that it's running Android 1.6 is a bit disappointing, but Garmin-Asus has added a few tweaks such as pinch-to-zoom in the browser (but frustratingly not tap-to-zoom).
The A50 is a dual 900/2100MHz HSDPA device and only available on Optus for now at $0 upfront on a $49 plan. In size and weight the A50 is almost identical to the iPhone 3GS, with the 3.5-inch display making the onscreen keyboard very usable.
As a smartphone, the A50 is a respectable package if not cutting edge. It includes a 3.5-inch, 320x480 TFT capacitive touchscreen display which is very responsive to the touch. It's also very bright and does a much better job of handling outdoor glare than the AMOLED display on the HTC Desire or the Super AMOLED display on the Samsung Galaxy S. There's a 600 MHz powerplant under the bonnet, along with 256MB of RAM - which is enough to keep the phone feeling snappy even if it falls short of the 1GHz processors in some phones. You've also got the usual suspects such as 802.11b/g wifi, Bluetooth with A2DP, 3MP camera with video capture, 4GB of onboard storage and an internal micro-SD card slot.
As a sat-nav device, the A50 comes with a charge cable and car cradle. The cradle attaches to the windscreen and mounts the phone on a ball joint so you can easily rotate and tilt the display.
An Android device capable of multi-tasking, the Garmin sat-nav app keeps running behind the scenes if you launch another app. This is obviously handy if you quickly need to do something else and don't want to relaunch the app. I like the fact that it automatically narrows down addresses as you type. It starts with the house number, but you'll only need to type part of the street name before you're offered a list of options for streets and then suburbs. You can also navigate to an intersection - which is handy if you don't know the exact address.
Once you get out on the road, the A50 does an admirable job of getting you from A to B. The menus and maps are clear, plus the phone displays a diagram of upcoming intersections. The voice is nice and loud with good pronunciation, plus it's easy to change the volume using the phone's volume buttons (unlike the stuffing around on the iPhone). Navigation is fast and accurate, with maps scrolling smoothly and the phone quickly recalculating if you take a wrong turn. The estimated time of arrival isn't very accurate - it seems to assume a perfect run, whereas Google Maps tends to add a few minutes to give a more realistic travel time.
I like that fact that if a call comes in, once you answer the phone switches back to the sat-nav software while you're still on the call. I don't like that if music is playing in the background it mutes the music while issuing a spoken command. There's no menu option to pause the audio instead, or just turn the music down a few notches while the sat-nav is speaking.
There are plenty of smartphone sat-nav apps around, for a range of different operating systems, but what helps the A50 stand out is the tight integration between the sat-nav features and the phone features. You can easily embed location links in an email or text, which can be used to launch the sat-nav app on another A50. On other devices they'll load Garmin's custom Google Maps website. You can even send geo-tagged images to another A50, allowing the person to easily navigate to that location.
It's easy to tap on an address in your Contact List and launch the sat-nav app, although surprisingly you can't access the Contact List from within the sat-nav app's menus.
Optus 124YES search is included in the sat-nav menus, so you can search for local services such as a chemist. You're then presented with a list of local chemists. Tap on one you're presented with a map, including links to call the chemist or launch the Garmin sat-nav app. 124YES is also voice-activated but the results can be hit and miss. It refused to recognise the word "chemist", but happily recognised "drugstore" and "pharmacy" - so I think a little more regional customisation may be required.
Other options in the sat-nav menus include Home, Points of Interest, Saved Locations, Intersections and Coordinates. There's also a "Gas Prices" option that lets you compare the prices at nearby petrol stations. You can also launch the Garmin app by clicking on a Google search result in the browser, but not in the Google Maps app.
There are plenty of other little touches that make the A50 a great sat-nav device - such as the fact that when you remove it from the cradle it automatically remembers where you parked the car. It also supports pedestrian GPS, vibrating when you reach a turn.
If you're already contemplating an Android smartphone and sat-nav features are a priority, you should definitely consider the Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50
I have always dreamed of a smarter GPS, better traffic understanding, better local road understanding and better "me" understanding. Garmin seems to be taking on the last one with MyTrends. The Garmin Nuvi 3700 series (3750, 3760T and 3790T) will take your favorite destinations and learn what the routes are and where you are likely headed to automatically pop up the route, the traffic (on the "T" models) and your expected time of arrival. Cool stuff. The new super thin Nuvi 3700 series
(did Apple copy Nuvi's square design for the iPhone 4?) was announced a few months ago and they packed a whole lot into a super slim form factor. From Garmin: "With myTrends, when you save your regular destinations in your "Favorites," your nüvi 3790T will, over time, begin to figure out where you're going even without your telling it! It provides time of arrival and relevant traffic information. So whether you're driving to and from work or a regularly scheduled weekly event, your nüvi 3790T will help you get there on time."
The MyTrends feature will start to learn regular trips of yours and understand that you are going to that weekly meeting or daily trip to work and bring up the best route with relevant information. The trick is to do this with accuracy and not automatically plan my trip to work when I am driving to the grocery store. This learning feature is hopefully just the start of some smarter GPS capabilities. I would like to see route feedback where the GPS learns from me that my shortcuts are faster than its mass market route planning, or that the trip on the highway isn't always the fastest because it learned from my habits. We'll get there.
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Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50 
