When the Garmin Nuvifone was first announced, it was truly interesting. A GPS-centric handset made by one of the world’s leading GPS manufacturers? Awesome! That was a year and a half ago.
Just when we were starting to get the inkling that this thing had gone the way of Duke Nukem Forever, Garmin has come out and given it a launch date – sort of. In a shareholder’s call today, Garmin COO Cliff Pemble said that we ought to see this things hit the open market in Asia sometime this month, and that a US carrier launch is “getting very close”.
It seemed risky at first – but now it just seems like the sun has set on this little venture. What was interesting a year and a half ago now seems dated and fairly silly. Is anybody out there still interested in this guy? Please do tell why in the comments.
Is it a sat phone? Because if it was, and it offered comparable reception to the other US carriers, at a better price, I would certainly be interested.
But I really don’t know anything about this thing. What else can you tell us?
It might make a good secondary ’sports’ phone for the skier, cyclist, or hiker. Having a robust and fully featured GPS without having to carry a second device could come in handy sometimes. As long as I could move my SIM card (my carrier supports the phone) I might buy one. I wouldn’t use this as my primary phone, however. People spend hundreds for speciality shoes, why not specialty phones?
The only issue I can see with Garmin putting out a phone is consumers misunderstanding how it works. If it will work on the standard national carriers, people will need to understand that it will still lose its phone signal if no towers are around. Sure, the GPS will still work, but just because that’s still working doesn’t mean the phone portion still will.
Hopefully Garmin will not misrepresent the phone and make this point clear.