Garmin’s early attempts at moving into the smartphone market were not wholly successful, but things are looking up thanks to their long rumoured move to the Android OS. The A50 will be officially unveiled next week, and could be surprise contender in an industry where free navigation is beginning to be a must-have for new devices.

Garmin and ASUS claim that the A50 brings “more location technology than any other smartphone” with a plethora of location-aware apps making use of a highly sensitive (though unnamed) GPS receiver. Spec-wise, the A50 packs a 3.5-inch HVGA (that’s 480×320 pixels, presumably) capacitive touchscreen with custom, finger-friendly UI, 4GB of internal storage with microSD expansion, and accelerometer for the usual portrait to landscape mode flip.

via Garmin-ASUS nuvifone A50 runs Android, knows where you are — Engadget.

Its design is not perfect: the miniUSB port placement at the back is a little hard to reach once mounted to the dinky car cradle and the TMC receiver/antenna combo – which doubles as your car charger – is a mass of cabling.

Delving into the interface proved as inviting as ever, with large colourful icons that were easy to press. The 1490T is also the first Garmin model we have seen to incorporate a basic feedback system, similar to that on TomTom systems for a while, so we could add ratings or report errors to POI.

Other than this the Garmin provides similar features to the cheaper 1340T, which is not a bad thing, as you can navigate using geo-tagged images, add custom POI and there is the same handy pedestrian profile available, with optional cityXplorer support (prices vary) for routing around public transport in major cities, though the 1490T is a little big compared to the latter device making it less pocket friendly.

Another feature which we were re-united with was ‘ecoRoute’ which in layman’s terms provides a series of tools that could help you cut down on your fuel costs (some more useful than others).

We found once you have keyed in your car specific info, such as city/motorway mpg and current price of fuel, the system can then use this to display the cost of each journey before you set off, as well as recording additional route specific information such as carbon footprint, fuel costs and distance/time travelled, all of which can be viewed back in Excel – thus ideal for business users!

We were also pleased to see a route planner included for plotting multiple routes and Bluetooth hands free support, with the latter providing handy access to our Touch HD’s phone book, call history and the ability to dial POI. Unfortunately whilst this was functional call quality was a little metallic and distant at times.

This could have been partly a result of the back speaker which does tend to vibrate at high volume, with the default Emily text-to-speech voice also incorporating a slight glitch before each direction was made – easily fixable by switching to one of the many additional voices supplied.

Out on the road its first time lock did take a while to pin point our location. However subsequent locks were quicker and the Garmin was able to keep track of our position accurately with fast initial route calculations and respectable route re-calculations to match.

The large 5” display also coped pretty well in brighter conditions and was easy on the eye, with a useful array of customisable directional aides dotted around the screen to match, such as driving direction, elevation and speed. Further driving aides take the form of road speed warnings, lane guidance, motorway views and safety cameras and all of which worked as well as we would have expected.

The map detail is not overly complex, lacking some of the eye-candy of some other manufacturers, but the uncluttered approach makes it easy to get your bearings with just a brief glance at the screen.

TMC picked up traffic around our location in reasonable time, with standard avoidance options and info being available at the touch of a button. However we did notice that at one point it seemed to lose TMC reception unexpectedly and at other times we found by plugging in the cigarette charger this made the Garmin go into PC sync mode. Thankfully these were rare occurrences, but it’s something to note none the less.

The Garmin 1490T is not 100% glitch proof out the box and feature wise it doesn’t provide a great deal more than its smaller siblings. But its massive screen and cheaper online price (we found it for under £200) make it a tempting proposition for those looking for a cutting edge satnav.

Map coverage: Europe
Price: £269 (SRP)
Web: www.garmin.com

Essential verdict
Performance: 7/10
Design: 7/10
Features: 8/10
Value for Money: 9/10
Overall Score: 8/10

Written by Brett James. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

Garmin has unveiled the nüvi 1490TV satnav system, featuring full pan-European satellite navigation and an integrated digital TV tuner.

Using the DVB-T digital television standard, the nüvi can pick up freeview digital TV and radio content from over 14 countries across Europe.  In the UK there are over 50 digital TV channels and 24 digital radio stations including programmes from digital content providers such as the BBC, ITV, SKY, Film4 and Five to name a few.

The nüvi 1490TV features a dazzling, 5-inch colour touchscreen display, ensuring any picture is bright and colourful, great for sporting events such as the forthcoming FIFA World Cup as you won’t have to miss any of the games with this pocket-sized TV.

A uniquse safety feature also ensures the TV can only be used while the device is stationary, and only allows navigation while the car is moving.

The nüvi 1490TV will be available across Europe in early April 2010.

The 1690 is the first Garmin nüvi GPS device that we have seen that features the new nuLink over the air pan-European services such as traffic, camera updates and Google local search, bringing them into line with the recent high-end live devices from TomTom.

Garmin are certainly going for broke by including the first year of connected services for free as part of the package, making it a much more attractive proposition compared to TomTom’s one month free subscription on their new GO 950 device.

The 1690’s design is along similar lines to the other recently remodelled nuvis such as the 1340T we reviewed a few months back. The only exceptions are a slightly larger profile and a more attractive black finish, though its framed 4.3” screen is still a touch old fashioned. Garmin’s interface is still quick and easy to use, and the new nuLink services are seamlessly integrated into the system as well.

Under the “Where to option”, for example you can gleam additional POI from Google Local search, view the nearest petrol stations based on fuel prices and even look up addresses or phone numbers. Using the Google Local search we were able to find POI effectively which would normally be missing from the internal database.

We were in two minds about the fuel price search. Mostly it showed prices that were a few days old so there wasn’t an absolute guarantee of their accuracy, although it is a useful guide nonetheless. The phone/address look up service was more effective as we could enter a last name (and optional first) and find all the addresses of people with that surname in our area – nice!

Under the Tools options we found a few more services to play with, like the 6 day weather forecast, notification of updates/alerts and flight status option..

We did not get chance to test the “send to GPS” feature and “Ciao” service (which works alongside social networking site Gypsii) as these were not available at the time of writing. On paper both could prove useful for businesses.

The “send to GPS” feature compliments the installed route planner by allowing you to send directions to the unit wirelessly using Google Maps. Ciao allows you to share your location with friends/colleagues, who can either view your position on a map or drive to your location if they so wish.

Live traffic kicked in during testing which alerted us to a possible disruption to our journey (alongside the time of the delay and an option to re-route around the problem). We decided to head straight into the traffic to test its accuracy. By the time we got to the traffic it had already filtered out but the device in fairness had been reflecting changes to the time of the delay quite frequently.

One of the issues you need to remember with these more sensitive real-time traffic systems is while they might alert you to more traffic build-ups, not all of them will result in a delay in your journey.

Before setting off on our journey we noted that location acquisition time was quick. The initial calculations were respectable with some useful ecoRoute information displayed alongside such as cost of fuel for each journey. However on a few occasions it seemed to take an age to recalculate the routes, especially when we were facing in the wrong direction.

Yet strangely at other times route-recalculations were pretty quick even when taking minor wrong turns! Our test device was not running the final firmware, and we would expect these issue to be smoothed out in the retail units.

Visually and functionally the map view is quite sparse compared to the likes of the eye candy-heavy Navigon. There were a couple of times when the text-to-speech directions could have been more informative.

But generally it had enough directional aids onboard, such as motorway/lane guidance, road speed warning symbols, and safety cameras, to get us safely to our destinations. Bluetooth hands free calling was also loud and clear, we could call contacts from our HTC Touch HD’s phone book and recall the phone’s call history, so thumbs up on this front.

The Garmin 1690 is certainly an impressive device. While it is undeniably expensive – and aimed at high-mileage drivers – the nuLink services do work well and the lack of subscription costs in the first year do add appeal.

Price: £349
Web: www.garmin.com
Map coverage: Europe

Verdict: 8/10

Written by Brett James. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

English Super League team Bradford is going to utilize GPS technology to keep tabs on their players performance on the field. Whether during a game or at practice the technology will offer detailed information such as their heart rate and their movement around the field.

via GPS technology on Rugby field — NaviGadget.

The 8410 incorporates its capacitive screen (similar to that used on the iPhone) into a deceptively slim profile which despite its size and weight looks the part with a lovely brush metal finish at the front to match.

Navigon in their wisdom have also added a media player (video, audio, picture) to take advantage of the larger screen, including room for an optional digital TV-tuner. Sadly we didn’t get chance to test the latter but the videos we played back looked great, and we could happily listen to our music even when driving, though the player is a little fussy in terms of codec support.

Linking up the Navigon via a USB cable to transfer files across seemed to cause the software to freeze once the cable was removed, which was a little disconcerting.

Firing up the main navigation software greets you with the familiar Russian doll style interface as before, whilst the software is not quite as quick as the likes of TomTom for example, it works well enough and the capacitive screen proved responsive to the touch.

We were really pleased to see that entering destinations has been enhanced with the option to enter full postcodes with a street/house number and the voice command feature has been updated to include simpler screen swipe activation, the ability to voice control POI, My Destinations or even dial contacts from our Bluetooth enabled phone.

In terms of accuracy the above worked pretty well – with practice – inside the car (with typical driving background noise), but it still felt counter intuitive at times as you have to wait for a chime to finish before speaking and the voice control tends to turn itself off after exiting certain options so we were still reaching over to touch the screen more than we would have liked.

As for the remaining set of features rest assured you’ll find all the fan favourites are onboard such as MyRoutes technology, which in layman’s terms presents you with three route choices before embarking on your journey (though we always picked the first choice to save time), lane guidance, text-to-speech, TMC and safety camera alerts (to name but a few), but now you’ll also have two new options to play with, namely the last mile and Real City 3D.

We really liked the last mile option as you can park close to your destination and then be routed to the final stages on foot using a true pedestrian profile (and then back to the car) with the map view changing slightly to incorporate a compass and other visual aids – nice!

Next we tested the Real City 3D view which comes to life when approaching major cities. With Real City 3D the screen changes to a 3D representation of your surroundings, with a small standard mini map in the corner.

Whilst graphically we could see that buildings did resemble their real-life counterparts (which was exciting), we found that screen updates were sluggish and the view a tad distracting at times, though we have to admit it shows great promise.

As for general performance we noted that indoors it can take a while to lock onto our position but out on the road we had no major problems to report, though if were being picky route cautions could be a touch faster and battery life drains quickly when the screen is set on full brightness.

Bluetooth calling was loud and clear, there’s a handy track recorder option so you can view routes back in Google Earth and the map view looked vibrant on the 5” display, though street names were harder to see with the text being a similar colour to the background and enabling all the directional aids is still a little overpowering.

You could argue that for the price Live services should have been included, as the process of updating cameras for example is still relatively old fashioned, but the good news is an update will become available once the 8450 comes out.

The 8410 is expensive and a few kinks need ironing out but with its lush 5” display, pedestrian profile and wealth of additional directional aids as standard it’s certainly worth consideration.

Price: £349
Web: www.navigon.com
Map coverage: Europe

Verdict: 8/10

Written by Brett James. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

Telmap is the latest navigation provider to bring their existing smartphone application to the iPhone, via O2 in the UK. Unlike the previous packages we’ve seen, from the likes of TomTom and Navigon, Telmap is an offboard solution. This means the maps are stored remotely, rather than on the device, and downloaded only as and when you need them, similar to the way Google Maps works.

The approach has its pros and cons. On the positive side you don’t have to download and store several hundred megabytes of maps on your iPhone as you do with, for example, the more than one gigabyte-sized TomTom app.

And because you don’t actually own a copy of the maps you can hope to have access to more up to date information: when Telmap updates their maps on the server that’s what you will use; you won’t have to buy an updated version.

On the downside you can’t use the app without network access, although we did find that they downloaded pretty quickly even over a basic GPRS connection where 3G wasn’t available, so you shouldn’t have too many problems unless you are heading to very obscure locations.

Perhaps of greater concern is that you probably won’t want to use the app overseas, because even though you can access maps from around the world roaming charges are significantly greater and not included as part of your regular data allowance. It’s also worth noting that with both data and GPS active the already weak iPhone battery will not last too long without a charge.

In use Telmap Navigator feels very much like an iPhone app. This is a mixed blessing – it’s simple and easy to use but also lacks some of the more advanced features and options of its rivals. Indeed, the interface is very stripped back, with a menu bar at the top with three main options (Map, Where To and My Places) plus the global settings which offers you a grand total of six options to change. A row of icons at the bottom of the main screen allows you to show points of interest on the map.

Tap the Where To button to choose your route. You can navigate to addresses, contacts etc as well as finding nearby events using the ‘woZZon’ service. woZZon is quite a nice idea as it can find live information, such as concerts happening in your area, but is poorly implemented – it feels more like an app within an app rather than an integral part of the system.

When plotting you route you can either choose to go from your current location or plan a route beforehand, where you can pick a start and end point but no ‘via’ points. When entering your location you can use a full postcode or type an address.

With the latter the iPhone keyboard will automatically open with the number row showing so you can easily enter the house number. It’s only a minor thing, but those kinds of details greatly enhance an app’s usability.

Once you’ve entered your destination you are given the choice of a walking or driving route. When driving the display switches to a 3D map, viewable in portrait or landscape mode. Once again it is quite basic, with few options for customising what infomation you see or how you see it.

The next turn is clearly signposted, and the voice directions are also clear and timely. These are aided by text to speech which announces road names, albeit in a slightly different voice to the main one.

Traffic information is integrated into your route and you can divert around any upcoming blockages, although it isn’t possible to make any changes to your route as you drive, beyond going off course and waiting for the software to reroute you.

Walking mode is a useful alternative but in practice offer little beyond what you can already get in the iPhone’s Google Maps application.

Overall, we found the performance of Telmap Navigator to be quite reliable and not at all hindered by the need to download maps as you drive. It was a little slow, perhaps, to calculate the route initially, but we never found ourselves waiting for the maps to appear while on the move.

Telmap does have fewer features than some of its counterparts and as a result is probably best seen as more of a casual navigation app rather than something for high mileage drivers.

Price: tbc
Web: www.telmap.com
Map coverage: Europe

Verdict: 8/10

TMC Receiver

Kapten
Price: £N/A
Website: www.widget.com
Kapten offers a slightly different approach to traditional navigation systems by providing a smart urban solution which features no screen and relies completely on voice interaction, so for example all you need to do is speak your destination and Kapten will be able to route you there promptly – even if you are cutting through parks or one way streets. It can also be used on the bike, public transport or inside the car and provides the ability to share your geo-tagged locations with others, so the emphasis on community sharing seems strong.

Keyring Bluetooth GPS Receiver
Price: from £43
Website: www.mobilefun.co.uk
For phones not blessed with a GPS receiver as standard your best option is to buy a  3rd party Bluetooth alternative and link this to your phone. Of course this does have a few disadvantages because you are having to carry around an extra piece of equipment and need to remember to take it with you when you walk out the house. Which is one of the reasons why the key ring GPS Bluetooth receiver would be ideal as it’s small and clips onto your existing set of car keys so you’ll never forget it.

Mains Charger
Price: £varies
Website: www.expansys.com
As simple as it sounds one of the best accessories you can get for your GPS device is a mains charger, this way you can save yourself the hassle of going to the car or turning on your PC in order to charge it, plus a mains charger is normally a better method of optimising the battery for long term usage. Most manufactures will utilise a mini-USB connection so you will have plenty of products to choose from at respectable prices, only the GPS devices which utilise a propriety connector may cost slightly more.

Basic Car kit: Mini-USB Car Mount Bundle
Price: £15.52
Website: www.clove.co.uk
If you already own a PND device you will not need to bother with a car cradle or charger as the product would have shipped with one, but for smartphones 9 times out of 10 you will need some way of mounting your phone to the windscreen and keeping it powered. The universal Mini-USB Car Mount Bundle should be an ideal solution as it provides a USB car charger and a sturdy cradle which can hold a number of different makes of phones with various widths and sizes.

Compared to the top of the range products from Garmin, MotionX-GPS Sports did a remarkably good job of being able to record and track our position, as well a providing a host of additional features for next to nothing. While it does not provide traditional step-by-step route guidance as such, it does at least include a GPS/magnetic compass and various maps so you can navigate to waypoints or visually follow your tracks.

Geo-caching enthusiasts will also be pleased to see gpx file support and the ability to view GPS co-ordinates using a variety of formats such as DMS, UTM and MGRS.

You’ll find all the above encased in a well presented and functional interface, though it can be a little frustrating to master at first as there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing going on between screens and the iPhones multi-touch controls are not fully implemented, but you can customise the interface to suite and we really liked the ability to control our iPod music and adjust backlight brightness without leaving the software.

Maps are downloaded to your phone over the air with a wide range to choose from including Bing, Google and MotionX’s own O-Road/Terrain topography maps  (the latter displaying contours at certain zoom levels). Maps did take a bit of time to come through over the EDGE network but with a 250MB cache available we took advantage of our Wi-Fi connection to download most of the maps before we set off on our journey anyway.

Additionally thanks to its gpx support we could also do a bit of pre-route planning by utilising Google Earth and GPS visualizer (the latter can also be used to display elevation profiles) to create compatible routes which we could then import -via email – to our iPhone, a brilliant feature that is a lot easier to do than it sounds!

Out on the trail we tested the app during a 2 hour bike ride and a 25 minute run. Outdoors the GPS acquisition was pretty quick and stable so we got started straight away by bringing up the basic track recorder, which also provides a handy option to take photos (photos then become waypoints and are marked on the map).

Once the record button is hit the software starts to display information automatically such as speed, time and distance or you can flip between additional screens to bring up your tracked position which is overlaid on the map (tracking was accurate), as well as gleaming altitude, bearing, compass directions or Lat/Lon position for example.

After the track/waypoint has been recorded you then have the option to save and upload the file to popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter or via email, which was brilliant! We could then visually see how we had performed on the day – thus proving useful as a basic training aid – as well as seeing the track displayed accurately (including the correct side of the path we were on) in Google Maps/Earth.

Our only gripes was that the software doesn’t automatically stop the timer when you stop, so you need to manually do this via the pause button and when you re-start it does wait for a few seconds before continuing to track your position which results in gaps appearing in your recorded tracks.

Navigating to waypoints or following tracks was not quite as quick at updating our position once we went AWOL as we would have liked either, but for the purpose of outdoor pursuits it works well.

Mind you the GPS compass option did seem to be struggling on our bike ride to maintain accurate headings, so we needed to switch to the magnetic compass at times (3Gs only) and we would have liked a message to appear on the screen notifying us when we had arrived to waypoints.

Still MotionX-GPS Sport is a great little app. We loved the track recording, import and community sharing features and despite its GPS compass not performing as well as expected for £1.79 it’s a bargain. Better still give the free version a go before you buy.

Price: £1.79
Map coverage: Worldwide
Web: iTunes

Verdict: 8/10

Sygic Mobile maps has not quite had the same ticker tape parade as some of its competitors but it still provided all the essential ingredients for solid A-to-B navigation when we tested the latest 7.71.4 version on our iPhone3GS.

As with most applications downloaded from the App Store the installation process was relatively plain sailing, but for some reason Sygic Mobile Maps requires double the storage space when it first syncs over, so if you’re running on the low side this is something to consider.

The software gives good first impressions as it boots up quickly and a tap of the map screen yielded a colourful interface with large icons that were easy to press. Mind you there was a strong Windows Mobile look and feel to proceedings as Sygic have not embraced the iPhone’s multi-touch control system to great effect, so you won’t be able to swipe between pages or zoom in to the map by pinching/double tapping the screen.

We would also have liked to have seen a larger keyboard for typing as the one supplied is a little on the small side and we noticed that after each key press there seemed to be a touch of corruption (graphically) around the edges which wasn’t a good look – yet functional none the less.

The good news is that the accelerometer worked for landscape orientation and you’ll find support for your phone’s contacts which was handy, but we did find that it was a little fussy in this department as you have to ensure that each contacts address field is fully populated otherwise it won’t navigate using the postcode alone.

Despite these niggles the application was still enjoyable to use and we found the core features on offer to be more than adequate. You can, for example, take advantage of the handy route itinerary planner/simulator, drive to interim destinations and navigate using variety of methods from entering gps-co-ordinates directly to full postcodes or POI.

The only gripe with the post codes was that we couldn’t refine our search further with a street or house number, plus the default POI were a touch out-of-date. In some ways the ability to add our own custom POI offered sufficient compensation, we would have liked the option to add our own phone number to the above but at least we could set customisable alarms to go off on route, with a little icon appearing on the map of our choosing.

During driving the map view provided a comfortable enough viewing experience with easy to read street names, a handy road speed warning symbol and the automatic zoom was helpful in ensuring that we could always see what roads/roundabout were heading our way, though we did find that some of the directional aides at the base, as well as the POI icons and motorway lane guidance icons/signposts were smaller than we would have liked.

In terms of routing performance initial route calculations were quick, GPS acquisition likewise and more importantly it could maintain our position pretty accurately, only route efficiency was not quite up to the same standard.

As for safety camera alerts there were a few cameras on route that were missing so updates at some point would be needed, but on the whole the ones it did find were accurately detected with a large visual warning sign appearing on screen showing us the correct countdown yardage.

Voice directions were also satisfactory, if a little basic, however on a few roundabouts we found its commands a little confusing as it told us to go straight over a roundabout and then take the third exit (for example).

On a positive note we could happily listen to our iPod music in the background with directions fading out the latter beautifully and on the US version there seems to be text-to-speech voice directions, so hopefully this will appear on the UK version shortly to boost its appeal.

Personally we felt that whilst Sygic Mobile maps was a good product it has yet to offer proper integration with the iPhone’s core system and as a result felt more like a Windows Mobile port. Still there was just about enough quality/features onboard to warrant consideration, so long as it stays at its current attractive price point.

Price (as reviewed): £29.95
Map coverage: UK & Ireland
Web: iTunes

Verdict: 7/10