Garmin-ASUS launches nuvifone M20 smartphone

Posted by David Walker on Thu 12 Feb 2009

Phone a friend - or find them

The first joint project was a re-hash of a previously-seen phone, but we had high hopes for the follow-up to the nuvifone G60 from Garmin and Asus, now revealed as the nuvifone M20.

Sadly, it doesn't quite live up to the billing, not least because it doesn't feature the Android operating system, content to maintain the status quo with Windows Mobile 6.1. Maybe next time eh? But the M20 does have other strings to its bow. The biggest of those is a feature called Ciao!, allowing you to use the GPS features (remember, it's a Garmin phone to locate your mates, after all). Sound familiar? Yes, sounds not dissimilar to Google Latitude on the face of it, but we'll wait to see it in action, before we draw unfair comparisons.

Aside from that, there's a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen, 4GB or 8GB of on-board storage, a 3-megapixel camera (with automatic geotagging), high-speed HSDPA connectivity, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and as we mentioned previously, all the GPS you can eat, throwing in the likes of real-time traffic, weather and cinema times along the way. And if you tilt the M20 sideways, it drops the phone stuff, throwing upp the GPS options instead. Clever stuff.

No news on a launch or price for the nuvifone M20 as yet, but we'll speculatively guess the second half of 2009.

Link: Garmin