More than a year of promises and plastic mock-ups! Many of us will remember the Garmin-Asus nuvifone G60 we have for a review that caught the media attention way back in 2008. After being announced in January 2008, the official release of Garmin’s navigation smartphone was delayed time and again. Thankfully, the ‘on schedule’ folks over at Garmin and Asus were able to unveil the G60 out through AT&T before the Christmas 2009.
But if we keep a reality check, then a lot has stumbled upon the mobile world between then and now. A slew of Android mobile devices have blown in, dedicated portable navigation devices have found themselves in the bargain bin, and some nice GPS software has managed to set foot in Apple’s App Store and the Android Market. With all this, the question piles out if the nuvifone G60 has managed to be ahead of the game.
The handset came to us neatly packed in a squared black box, composing itself pretty sturdily in an impressive pitch-dark body. To help us get under way, Garmin-Asus dropped an elegant leather case bearing the Garmin-Asus logo, a travel adapter for charging, a quick start manual, headphones and a car navigation kit. On turning on the touchscreen smartphone, it gave us a straight out of the image look, no more different and no less same.
The size and screen of the phone appeared pretty cool to us, evening up with our on-going style statement. Though the dimensions are not so-convenient to carry in that bitty pocket, it still pulls off to be ‘in’. In terms of breadth, G60 comes handy as neither too big for a phone nor too small for a navigation device. But to point it out, our fingers felt it to be slightly chunky, making us split hairs with loads of sleeker devices hitting the town day in, day out. If overlook that aspect, users always on business trips may appreciate its aesthetics and neat chassis. The case of G60 is tinted with black shade with a matte finish in the front and back.
The left and right contours holding the front and back panel are made with steel while the top and bottom part of the chassis gives a sleek look. There’s a microSD card slot placed on the left fringe followed by a USB port. A dedicated 3-megapixel camera rests on the bottom of the right edge and above it leans a button that helps one higher or lower the volume. The front speaker is featured in a slit just above the screen while the word ‘nuvifone’ is inscribed orderly below the screen. Hanging a turn on the phone displayed the Garmin-Asus logo neatly tailored onto a thick strip of steel which also includes the camera lens next to the logo. There’s a boxy-shaped speaker just above the camera lens while the top portion houses the 2.5mm headset jack. Just next to it, is the power on/off and lock/unlock button. Other than this, the front face of the phone is bare with no buttons.
The main screen of the device includes three ‘can’t miss it’ functions, Call, Search and View Map. A neatly divided scrollball menu let us easily scroll through the other contents of the phone. We could customize the Menu by simply going to the Application Settings. Apart from this, we could adjust the brightness up to 100 percent through the Display Settings. There’s also a Color Mode that chooses from Auto, Daytime and Nighttime options, delivering an unprecedented level of resolution. But to bitter pill, a shortcut to the home menu was nowhere to be found. We found the screen quite receptive to a finger touch, swiping through the phone for navigation was also a pleasant experience. Designed to execute more than one core function, the surface of the device makes it deserved for dashboard, thanks to its non-slip part.
Coming to the software, the user interface of the gizmo turned out to be reasonably decent. The dialer screen, contact list and recent calls tab are all fairly basic while the threaded text message screen did us a favor of keeping track of our conversations. We didn’t find any can of worms with setting up our Gmail account and downloading our most recent messages onto the phone. But the omission of more advanced features like stars and labels did dash our hopes to an extent. The extras that Garmin-Asus throws in include features like weather, flight status, converter, local events and more.
Second thing that occurred off-the-wall was the emplacement of a QWERTY keypad. While it is displayed in the landscape mode, the phone shows off a standard keypad in the portrait mode. We didn’t find the messaging experience too comfortable to cling like ivy. Though the messaging feature had predictive typing, still most of the time we simply ended up typing the wrong keys, finger tappers may grumble about it! Those who like anything ‘in tune’ may cotton to its decent music player and an Audio Boost feature. Another thing that made us pick up on was, though it supports Bluetooth, there’s no send via Bluetooth option in messages, images or music files.
Talking about navigation, the most highlighted feature of G60, the nuvifone G60 comes preloaded with local maps including North America, Eastern and Western Europe or specific Asia-Pacific regions. If you have ever used any of Garmin’s PND before, the nuvifone G60’s navigation features will look and feel quite familiar. The system implementing the turn-by-turn voice-prompted directions allowed us to find out their latitude and longitude coordinates. If you are messed up with where to go, then you can definitely utilize a local search feature that connects to a server to find points of interest. The rear speaker ensured navigation instructions which were loud and clear. Home, Points of Interest, Favorites, Recently Found and Cities are some of the other features that detail navigation. But unfortunately, it slips the ‘Go to’ option, leaving everybody ask why a navigation-centric gizmo would say goodbye to such an essential option. As a blend of a navigation device and phone, the G60 allowed us to toggle between calls and routing without any hassles.
The smartphone also embraces an advanced mobile HTML web browser. You can easily surf the web on your mobile device via Wi-Fi or 3G networks. While analyzing, it was also spotted supporting POP3 and IMAP4 email such as Yahoo!, Hotmail and Gmail. On voice clarity, it renders a decent call reception. Its Linux-based operating system nature makes brilliant while using the 3 megapixel camera with auto-focus. Clicking a few pictures with a dedicated camera put forth some good quality images.
To sum it up, the G60 emerges as a good choice for users who want a navigation device with the ability to engage in conversations. With navigation at its heart and some puzzling functions, it can still be considered as a ‘go-go’ routing gizmo. As a navigation mobile phone, we’d give the G60 a decent 8 out of 10. The Garmin-Asus nuvifone G60 can be purchased for Rs. 30,000.