nuvifone? Not yet!
It looks like we’re going to have to wait a bit longer for the already long-awaited Garmin nuvifone. The release of their GPS-laden cell phones, made for Garmin by Eee PC experts Asus, is being pushed back to the second half of the year, acccording to The Mirror.
We got a first glimpse of a nuvifone “under glass” (they wouldn’t let anyone touch the prototype) back at CES in January, 2008 and the 3GSM show in Barcelona a month later.
Nearly a year later, at CES in January of 2009, we got to see a Linux-OS-based nuvi model in action. Those handsets worked well and looked very cool.
Hopefully, this new delay, from first to second-half of the year, will take weeks– not months. A Summer, 2009 nuvifone would be a lot better than Winter, 2009.
With GPS features now coming as standard equipment on other smartphones, Garmin needs to get their designs to market ASAP. The company has a lot riding on them. Everything, actually.