Too little too late? Yeah, we think so, too. It’s not that the Garmin Nuvifone G60 ($99.99 through Amazon, $199 through AT&T) is a bad idea, a bad GPS device, or a bad phone, because it isn’t. It’s perfectly capable, and if it had been available when it was first announced—way back in January of 2008—the tech world would have sat up and listened. But now turn-by-turn navigation is a standard smart phone feature, the iPhone offers a bevy of good GPS navigation apps, and Google provides free GPS on Android phones like the Motorola Droid. A precipitous price drop within just a few weeks of launch makes the Nuviphone more affordable than some competing touchscreen phones, but this device still isn’t a good deal.
Design
The Nuvifone is attractively compact. It feels solid and has a bit of heft to it (weighing 4.8 ounces and measuring 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.6 inches). Its smooth, soft texture feels good in the hand. The front of the G60 is dominated by the 3.5-inch touchscreen. The front also carries a little branding, but no controls. The power button is on the top, and once you’ve tapped it you’ll need to double-tap the screen to unlock the phone.
The left side holds the mini-USB port and microSD Card slot; the right side holds the volume and camera buttons; and the back holds the 3-megapixel camera lens. We weren’t crazy about the touchscreen, as it didn’t recognize our inputs accurately; we often clicked an icon when we were trying to scroll.
Garmin has created a custom operating system for the Nuvifone. The start screen shows two columns, one with big icons labeled Call, Search, and View Map, and another with smaller icons labeled Calendar, Camera, Ciao (a social networking feature), Contacts, E-mail, Music Player, Settings, Text Messages, Tools, Weather, and Web Browser.
Interface
The Nuvifone doesn’t just have GPS navigation software grafted on; it’s woven into the operating system. A small satellite icon on the start screen shows your GPS reception right next to the battery level. Photos are automatically geotagged, and the included social networking program Ciao lets you share your location with friends.
It’s easy to jump into the navigation features, since they’re prominent on the G60’s start screen. The Search button lets you look up a destination, and View Map lets you see exactly where you are. Since the phone constantly monitors geolocation satellites, maps showed us our position in seconds. The map works in portrait or landscape mode, although the included window mount is meant for the latter orientation.
There are two options for destination searching on the G60: checking the preloaded 6 million points-of-interest (POI) database or running a live Yellowpages.com search. Both offer the same categories and the same experience. The results are similar, although Yellowpages.com has ratings for some entries. We were also able to enter an address, navigate to a stored contact, and pull up a list of recently found destinations.
Many options in the search category are behind a paid wall. Calling up gas prices, local events, movie times, traffic alerts, and white pages listings requires a premium subscription of $5.99 per month. (New users are entitled to 30 days of free service.) It feels like a mistake that Garmin didn’t include some live info with the cost of the G60.
