New Garmin Powered Palm GPS Navigator Kit
Palm and Garmin today announced a Palm GPS Navigator featuring Garmin Mobile XT software for the first time. Drivers using the new GPS Navigator with their Palm smartphones can rely on turn-by-turn, voice-prompted directions to easily find their destinations as well as millions of points of interest, updated traffic, fuel prices, hotel prices and weather forecasts.
Expected late November, the Palm GPS Navigator featuring Garmin software will be $249 USD. It will be compatible with the Palm Centro and the Treo 680, 700 series, 750 and 755p smartphones.
Garmin Mobile XT is preloaded on a microSD card (with miniSD and standard SD card adapters) that includes Garmin navigation software for the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Customers can easily route to a specific street address or choose from more than 6 million points of interest - such as restaurants, hotels, ATMs, and gas stations. In addition to turn-by-turn, voice-prompted directions, users also will see their exact position on a detailed moving map. If a turn is missed along the way, a new route will be recalculated automatically. Garmin's map data is provided by NAVTEQ - a world leader in quality mapping.
"Garmin is pleased to provide a navigation solution so Palm users can transform their favorite Palm Treo or Centro smartphone into a full-featured Garmin GPS navigator," said Charles Morse, director of mobile and PND marketing at Garmin. "Garmin Mobile XT is easy to use, has no monthly charges, and will help ensure that Palm users never get lost again."
In addition to navigation, Garmin Mobile XT includes free access to Garmin Online so that customers have useful, updated information at their fingertips, such as traffic, fuel prices, hotel prices and weather forecasts. The traffic service from www.traffic.com identifies accidents, road construction or other incidents affecting traffic, and routes users around the congestion. The fuel-price feature displays a filling station's name, fuel price, type of fuel and distance to the station (U.S. only).
The Palm GPS Navigator featuring Garmin Mobile XT software will be available in late November for $249 USD in the United States at Palm stores and online at Palm.com.
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No 650 Support?
Ahh, so that's how they plan on getting me to upgrade from my 650?
RE: No 650 Support?
I wonder how much Palm saved by going with 32MB or 64MB chips instead of 128MB or 256MB chips. The stunted development, bad quality reputation and subsequent lack of sales due to underpowering has to amount to something on their radar, but apparently not enough to make it worth addressing beyond sticking with the 64s.
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**Another vote for a >100MB RAM Treo**
comparable value..?
However, I fail to see how or why anyone would choose to fill up the RAM of their non-GPS chip containing Treo to run this. For as low as $150 you can pickup one of the plethora of dedicated GPS devices available on the shelves NOW. With a dedicated GPS you can actually use your cell phone as well as the data network and not ever need to interrupt your GPS routing to do it. And with the tiny battery in the latest Treo models, the less you lean on the poor thing the better.
In fact, the ONLY benefit I see of running a GPS program on the Treo would be to hook into the address book - a feature that Garmin still doesn't seem to have integrated into it's standalone GPS devices. But for the minute or so it takes to kludge in the address in a standalone - it's still better than not being able to use my Treo as a phone and/or data device at the same time I'm in my car. I'd imagine some people would love 8 hour drives without being accessible by phone, but not me.
*IF* the Treo ever gets a user-accessible GPS chip (and a heck of a lot more juice) THEN it would be nice to have routing software built in, though I would probably only rely on it for reference while on foot.
For driving I think the standalone GPS devices have a long future ahead, with lots of improvements that I'm still shocked they haven't implemented...
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**Another vote for a >100MB RAM Treo**
RE: comparable value..?
For most of my driving - WAY most - GPS is totally useless - and I giggle myself into incoherency every time I see an SUV driver here in warm Northern Virginia (gotta have that 4-wheel-drive...NOT!) with a dash-mounted GPS unit taking the same route to work every day but glancing over at the turned-on GPS unit with regularity as he/she creeps through rush-hour.
Having said that...
My freebie SE520A runs Java just fine. I recently downloaded the freebie Goolge Maps for Mobile onto it and that works fine. If I bought one of those $50 Bluetooth GPS receivers then GMFM would be able to track where I am as well as allow me to manually surf the earth. And allow bringing up local-to-the-loc restuarants, etc.
Don't need no GPS unit.
RE: comparable value..?
-- http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria=AA71678
Bet it costs like nothing to manufacture one of these guys if they're selling them retail for 50 bucks.
RE: comparable value..?
I'm a big fan of GPS in *appropriate* situations (driving to work every day and using it seems a little odd, but I sometimes check my email waaaay too often on the Treo so I understand). Drive around in New England and no doubt you'll appreciate having one.
I was an early adopter of some of the PDA GPS (Pocket PC with a $300 software package), and although a few wires have disappeared and the screens are now SMALLER it's still the same basic problem - when it's a GPS that you want available FULL TIME, you need to keep it separate from your PDA/Phone where usage patterns will likely overlap with the GPS.
All that said, I still encourage development of good packages for the Treo, especially ones that make Palm's dumb and cheap decisions stand out (and hopefully get addressed sooner rather than later). Googlemaps is about as far as mapping can go for me on the Treo - easy in, easy out, and gives me real time traffic - a "favorites" button is one of the few improvements necessary.
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**Another vote for a >100MB RAM Treo**
RE: comparable value..?
People who make deliveries, sales calls, or service calls would probably find the GPS-Phone useful in town. It would be helpful if you could talk to someone and look at a map at the same time, like you said.
Garmin not compatible with Garmin
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TomTom out of Palm OS?