NaviGadget

Mio announced an agreement with Mercedes on July 28 for bundled sale of its C710 car-use GPS (global positioning system) portable navigation device (PND), in the Taiwan market through August.

Mio’s C710 comes with 2GB of storage capacity for maps of Taiwan and different multimedia formats such as music, movies and photos. Mio C710 measures 112 x 76 x 20.6, and weighs 174g and is available at a recommended retail price of NT$18,800 (US$575), noted the company.

press release

Garmin is going to open a 15,000-square-foot showcase store on 669 N. Michigan Ave ready for the holiday season this year. Garmin plans to sell a wide range of products at this location including navigation devices for cars, running, biking, boating and flying.

Customers visiting Garmin will be greeted by a knowledgeable team that can answer questions and demonstrate a wide variety of Garmin products. Regularly scheduled training and seminars will also be held to educate current and future customers about the benefits of GPS and Garmin products. Customers may also purchase Garmin units and accessories at this location. In addition, the site will serve as a meeting and training facility for the Garmin retail network.

press release

Just recently we talked about the BTS-100 from StarsNav, which looks identical to the BTS110. The BTS100 was a radar and speed reminder with GPS to keep you from getting tickets. The BTS-110 is different; it is a GPS data logger/tracker. Since both have the main bluetooth GPS functionality you need to decide if you want it to come with a radar reminder or a data logger.

Key Functions & Features

• Bluetooth GPS receiver and GPS data logger all in one
• Optional Flash memory 4MB/8MB/16Mb
• Data upload/download via mini USB
• Motion sensor for auto power saving mode: the device switches on/off when it is moving/motionless.
• Power mode setting: GPS on only or bluetooth and GPS both on
• Ultra low power consumption, up to 22hours of continuous use with battery fully charged
• Rechargeable 1100mA Li-ion battery with the original made-in-Japan battery cells
• Cold/warm/hot start (42/38/3~6 seconds)
• 16 channels All-in-View tracking.
• Compatible with bluetooth enabled devices with Serial Port Profile (SPP)
• High sensitivity: -152dbm
• Build-in High Gain antenna
• Data format: longitude, latitude, speed , UTC
• GPS trace interval time setting from 1sec ~ 30 minutes
• GPS Trace data by distance interval 2~65535 meters

A recent review (technically just a personal opinion) came out comparing Magellan 3000T and Sony NV-U70. Sony NV-U70 (nav-u series) is listed at $500 (currently $100 rebate going on) and the Magellan 3000T is listed at $600. For the comparison, the Magellan unit tested was not out of the box, it was in-dash version whereas the Sony was out of the box.

Author thought that the Magellan interface was more intuitive than the Sony and the NV-U70 was lacking in the POI department. The review found the Magellan 3000T to be better because it found the autor’s favorite hot dog stand.

Even its [the NV-U70] tall, orange box looks trendier than what the Magellan comes packaged in. However, I immediately found searching for points of interest, with its prompt of “Category 1,” “Category 2” and “Point of Interest (Please Select),” very confusing.

As I drove, I liked that the names of landmarks, such as museums and ATMs, appeared on the map.

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Mio C710 got a lot of good points in this review. The C710 is high-end product from Mio, and offers a lot more features then the price cautious C210 model. It has a lot improvements compared to it, specially in the body design. Let’s get started:

Pros

• compact body design
• extra inch of screen then C210
• easy zoom and elevation controls
• one free subscription to the Mio Traffic and speed camera alert service
• currency and unit converter
• 2GB of in-built flash memory

Cons

• somewhat slow update of position on the road
• default POI not very extensive
• can’t listen mp3 while navigating

Although Tomtom can crow about their online Plus service, which is great once you’re set up with a subscription, what you get built in with the C710 is even more impressive.

The Mio retails for about £360, which makes it a direct competitor to the Tomtom Go 510. However, the Mio C710 offers you much, much more for your money.

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A very recently founded California company called GloNav announced that they would be entering the GPS chipset market, targeting wireless handsets and mobile device applications.

The GloNav technology portfolio includes the industry’s lowest-power, highest-sensitivity and fastest TTFF GPS/assisted-GPS (A-GPS) receiver as well as the lowest power, most highly integrated GPS radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC). The digital signal processing (DSP)-based receiver includes embedded and host-based satellite acquisition and navigation software developed specifically for assisted GPS applications on cellular networks and optimized to provide high levels of accuracy in both indoor and outdoor environments.

Currently the biggest boys in the gps navigation market such as Garmin, TomTom, Magellan all use SiRF products. We’ll have to wait and see if GloNav can stop the SiRF dominance in this maket.

A nice short review of the TomTom Navigator 5, T-Mobile MDA, and OnCourse GPS receiver combo was done recently on theunwired. If bought seperately, these items cost $150, $300, and $130 respectively. The reviewer was able to get the TomTom Navigator 5 and the OnCourse combo for about $200, so that sounds like a good deal. Overall the review says good things about all three gadgets with some minor issues such as two applications sharing the audio on the MDA. Long story short, here are the pros and cons:

Pros

• Long battery life
• Quick satellite acquisition time (a.k.a start up time)
• Decent user interface, big icons
• Strong GPS signal
• Real time traffic info available and built into routing software (extra cost though)
• Certainly can take you from point A to point B without your traditional map

Cons

• Software in CD format (too many disks)
• Map loading via PDA is slow
• Slow application startup time
• Clumsy point of interest navigation UI
• Some routes might not be optimal or map might not be up to date

Review also talks about TomTom Traffic. This service, which costs around 40 Euros in Europe, is offered as trial in the US for free.

Getting real time traffic, IMO, is a key function for routing software. TomTom Traffic does not provide official service in the US at the moment. But I heard from support that there is a free trial going on between now and end of the year in the US. I decided to sign up for it. To do that, I first had to sign up for an account on the TomTom web site. Then set up Service Account in Change Preference using my email address and password.

To use real time traffic, I had to plan a route first. Then I went to TomTom Traffic and Update Traffic Info to get the latest traffic info on that route. It allowed constant traffic info download and let me determine the time interval. I set it for manual update as I don’t want my EDGE data to be used continuously during commute, since I cannot receive phone calls while using EDGE data.

This is a demo video of the new T43 Navi from i-station. The video is in Korean so most likely you won’t understand a word, but it is still nice to see it in action. The video will demonstrate dual view mode and how to zoom in and out of the map just by touching the screen and many other things.

i-naviSmart from Korea is a GPS navigator with DMB capabilities by Thinkware. It has a 4 inch screen and comes with an available SD media card slot so you can play mp3 and play videos in various formats.

for more pics go to aving.

Garmin is getting ready to release their bluetooth GPS receiver, GPS 10x, possibly to replace the older GPS 10 model. It will come bundled with software for Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices.

The GPS 10x measures 1.77″ x 0.75″ x 3.46″ and weighs 80g. The battery should last upto 12 hours.

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