New Garmin Powered Palm GPS Navigator Kit

Posted By: Ryan Kairer Tuesday, October 23, 2007 11:11:42 AM

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.

Centro Running Garmin SoftwareGarmin 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).

GPS Kit

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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TomTom out of Palm OS?

joeags @ 10/23/2007 4:49:05 PM # Q
I read somewhere that TomTom was going to be concentrating on their own systems, and I guess this is somewhat proof that they are going to be dropping out of the Palm OS software industry. Too bad if this is the case, as it's a nice product.

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No 650 Support?

razorpit @ 10/23/2007 6:13:47 PM # Q
"It will be compatible with the Palm Centro and the Treo 680, 700 series, 750 and 755p smartphones."

Ahh, so that's how they plan on getting me to upgrade from my 650?

RE: No 650 Support?
joad @ 10/24/2007 3:06:27 AM # Q
No, probably the lack of any sufficient RAM will kill off the 650 for much beyond the few databases it can hold. More and more fancier software requires the RAM that Palm still fails to include in their devices. I think many users of the present ones they list will have at least enough internal memory to make this function.

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**

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comparable value..?

joad @ 10/24/2007 2:58:09 AM # Q
Garmin makes very nice stuff, I've used both a standalone Garmin GPS as well as various Treo (and Palm PDA) solutions. And NAVTEC is also about as good as you can get.

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..?
SeldomVisitor @ 10/24/2007 7:19:36 AM # Q
I've noted before that I fail to see much utility in a GPS device - way cool, admittedly, but pretty much totally useless for just about 100% of the driving I do - I already know where I am, I know where I'm going, I know how to get there during via more than one route. And that USUALLY includes even when driving to a vacation spot - preplanning takes cares of anomolies pretty well.

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..?
SeldomVisitor @ 10/24/2007 8:37:11 AM # Q
Here's one of those el-cheapo GPS devices that my semi-smartphone could use:

-- 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..?
joad @ 10/25/2007 12:45:13 PM # Q
And here's a "Genuine Garmin" standalone GPS with a *WIDE* screen - $265 (or $255 with first time paypal purchase): http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204818939

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..?
Walk-n-Talk @ 11/5/2007 1:17:59 AM # Q
Now get out of the car. If you are hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, climbing or any other back-country activity a GPS-phone would be nice. As for myself, I would like to combine devices, a GPS-PDA-Camera-Phone would save some wires and pocket space. Here is my cluster of devices: a Palm Tungsten E, a cell phone, a Garmin E-map hand held GPS device, and for in the car a laptop connected to a A Garmin GPS 18 GPS receiver by USB cable (the laptop has Garmin Map Source for topo maps). Occasionally I need to draw a how-to-get there map for business, but mostly I just want to mark waypoints for recreation.
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.

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Garmin not compatible with Garmin

Walk-n-Talk @ 2/20/2009 10:43:48 AM # Q
Waypoints saved on a PC in Garmin Mapsource or Garmin nRoute cannot be synchronized or otherwise transferred to a Palm Centro using Garmin Mobile XT. Waypoints saved on the Centro cannot be transferred or synchronized to the desktop software either. Waypoints on a PC have lat-lon format like N40.78605 W106.28218. Waypoints on the Centro have a format like GARMIN 1C2A9FFF B576A585 B1FFF ABDEA4000 C0000. Just wonderful.

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