Garmin-ASUS Partnership Bringing You M10 Nuvifone Second Generation of Nuvifone Coming, Windows Mobile 6.5, GPS (of course)

Garmin, the maker of fine aviation electronics and the pioneers of GPS
equipment, first partnered with Tawianese electronics giant ASUS last
year to create the first iteration of their nuvifone. They've now taken
the covers off of the newest edition of the nuvifone, and it'll feature
a 3.5-in
ch touchscreen.
Unfortunately, the Garmin-ASUS still see fit to include the dreadful
Windows Mobile on their nuvifone, and it's not even the hotly
anticipated Mobile 7 or version 6.6 (which, allegedly will be optimized
for touchscreens) – it's instead, version 6.5, which features a
few improvements for touchscreens. To their credit, the pictures of the
N10 are showing a nice UI, so perhaps they've added some new touches.
For hardware, it has the aforementioned 3.5-inch touchscreen screen,
which is the same size as the iPhone and Nexus One. For a camera, it's
got a 5-megapixel camera, and will feature a pairing of 512MB of RAM and
512MB of flash storage for your media – and an included microSD
slot will help with that.
They've thrown in a Qualcomm MSM 7227 processor (with a clock speed of
600MHz) which is being lauded by the tech press for being a low-end
choice. A positive is since it isn't running the iPhone OS or Android,
they won't be running apps to bog down the processor (I kid).
The device will also include Garmin's GPS navigation software. A huge
pet peeve of mine is that the Global Positioning System, a service to
humanity provided by the US Air Force, requires no monthly fee, but many
mobile phone providers get away with charging $10 a month to their
customers for the right to use their phone's aGPS chip. Thankfully,
Garmin (one of the first companies to produce GPS receivers) has
included free GPS software to buyers of their phone.
The bad news is that the phone is only being offered in Taiwan, and will
only include Taiwan street mapping software. The phone will ship with a
spare battery and an in-car holder for using your nuvifone like a
traditional personal navigation device. Garmin-ASUS is now taking
preorders for the device, and the price is set at NT$13,900 ($435).