Well, it seems like South Korean companies aren't fooling around when it comes to getting us riding that newly minted Mobile TV bandwagon. In the wake of LG announcing its first Mobile DTV devices this morning comes Cydle with the P29A PMP. It sports a 2.9-inch touchscreen (see what they did there?), an accelerometer for automatic reorientation, a world clock, and voice recording via a built-in mic. That's a somewhat disappointing goodie list, considering the currently available HD radio-playing P29H (pictured for illustration purposes) also has GPS onboard. Still, you can snap up the A model in Q2 2010 for $199, which seems like a keen price when compared to the $499 Mobile DTV car tuner we've seen before.
So you're cruising along, with your GPS-enabled phone on the dashboard, taking your dear wife back home to Reno. The little gadget says "turn right" and you follow its typically reliable instructions. At what point in the next three days of plowing deeper and deeper into snow-covered Oregon do you start suspecting that maybe something is amiss? Alright, so this isn't quite on par with others driving buses into low-clearance tunnels, dipping their cars into rivers, or jamming heavy load trucks into unsuitably tight farm lanes. But we don't discriminate here, all instances of idiotic GPS dependency deserve their moment in the sun, so here's to Mr. John Rhoads and his tastefully named wife, Mrs. Starry Bush-Rhoads, who are now safe and sound after their phone pinged out its coordinates to emergency services when it began losing signal.
If the folks at Vexia are to be believed, green transportation is not about fancy electric vehicles or, heaven forbid, riding your bike — nope, it’s about having a GPS that offers advice on your driving. Both the Econav 480 (4.3-inch) and 380 (3.5-inch) can be configured for your specific automobile make and model, after which your usual calm, solitary driving experience is replaced by the cold mechanical voice of a satnav as it admonishes you for excessive acceleration, breaking, driving past the speed limit, and so forth. With other Econav models out in Spain for a while now, these guys are finally available to environmentally conscious Britons at prices starting at £149 (depending on model and map collection). And what about the states? It looks like you’ll be stuck taking driving direction from Homer Simpson for the time being.
The A8's Multi Media Interface (a fancy name for a nav unit with media player attached) is already a pretty sophisticated piece of tech, but Audi has opted against resting on those laurels and has pushed out a new feature for the luxury saloon's next iteration. The 2011 A8 (available in Spring 2010 -- crazy, we know) will benefit from the same handwriting recognition as promised for the next-gen R8, wherein the user is able to scribble his destination all John Hancock-like and then use the touchscreen to complete his instructions. With Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean character support, this could be a particular boon for gadget lovers of a more Eastern persuasion. And just in case you're fretting that the rest of your gear won't get as much love, there are further plans afoot for connecting the car via UMTS and distributing WiFi goodness to the devices inside it. The only thing this is missing is a Snoop Dogg voiceover for the ultimate in convergence tech. Video after the break.
Joining other comical characters such as Homer Simpson and, err, Kim Cattrall, Snoop’s VoiceSkin is available to download now for anyone who’s confident they can last more than five minutes receiving directions like “Turn around when possible and keep it ‘G’, ya d-i-g?” [VoiceSkins via NME]
Guess what, prospective Milestone owners, the Droid's one major advantage over its Euro cousin has just been coded out of existence by those proactive, un-American XDA Developers. The free Google Maps Navigation service, whose US announcement was so shocking as to decimate the stock prices of satnav purveyors Garmin and TomTom, has now been ported to work outside the land of the free as well. Not only that, but you can use the app on other Android devices, meaning your old G1 or Hero can get a breath of fresh air for absolutely free. That is if you don't count the time it takes you to learn how to insert all the code properly and the risk of bricking your device. But we know our readers eat iron nails for breakfast and fashion elegantly optimized code before lunch, so we expect all of you to be using this by day's end, you hear?
Get ready to tech up your driving experience, as Garmin has unveiled a new accessory for its nuvi line of GPS devices that lets you add a number of customizable gauges and monitoring utilities. The new ESP module tucks into the OBD-II diagnostics port on your car and communicates (via Bluetooth) all-important data like intake air temperatures and the fuel efficiency of your driving to the nuvi up top. Yea, it's been done before, but Garmin is (for the time being) a major force in navigation devices and could truly popularize this should there be enough interest. For our money, it's both a neat and geeky way to expand the functionality of the now threatened satnav species. The full dish on price and availability can be expected at CES 2010 this coming January.
If you're keeping tabs on Mio Technology's GPS happenings, you'll be interested to dip into some facts that PC World has uncovered about the company's upcoming offerings. According to the mag, the next version of the electronics-maker's MiBuddy satnav unit will dash the underlying Windows CE architecture for Google's newer and far more suave Android platform. The new device will be pushing into MID territory, boasting a 4.7-inch touchscreen along with a hardware slider keyboard, the ability to browse the internet, and WiFi and Bluetooth onboard. Call us crazy, but it seems possible that devices like dedicated PNDs running Android could easily adapt Google's new turn-by-turn system as their primary mode of operation. Alternately, you could switch between Mio's proprietary version and Google's variation... or they could axe the big G's altogether, though that awkward situation makes far less sense to us. No word on timing or price just yet, but we'll keep you posted.
Boy, TomTom sure has chosen the worstpossibletime to release their Car Kit for iPhone, and to make matters worse, their decision to not include the iPhone app is now set in stone. That's right, the hardware alone will set you back the cost of a TomTom ONE nowadays, and the $99.95 app works on the iPhone 3G and 3GS without it. So here's the question: is the car kit worth the extra $119.95? To find out, we got hold of a review unit for a sunny road trip around London. Surprisingly, the car kit uses Bluetooth to connect the GPS receiver to the iPhone, even though there's a dock connector for charging. Bluetooth connectivity does have its advantages: according to TomTom it can work as a generic Bluetooth GPS receiver for any satellite navigation app on the iPhone, or any smartphones at all for that matter. They even confirmed that the car kit could potentially compensate for the first-generation iPhone's lack of built-in GPS, but since TomTom's app won't run on anything but a 3G or 3GS we'll have to wait and see if that's actually useful. Meanwhile, TomTom is cooking up a compatible app for the original iPhone and the iPod Touch, which could make the car kit more worthwhile. Read on for our hands-on impression and test videos.
TomTom has been on a mission to keep itself relevant as smartphones increasingly start to overstep on its territory, and the GO I-90 is another move in its counteroffensive plan. Capable of slotting into the double DIN slot usually reserved for in-car radio / music players, its big selling point is that it integrates into your dashboard yet is still capable of being moved around like a discrete nav unit. You wouldn't be left decrying the loss of your radio either, with the GO I-90 sporting FM (with RDS support) and AM reception, USB support for MP3 players including iPods, and a promised compatibility with an "extensive" list of phones for handsfree calling -- unfortunately, the poorly worded PR makes no mention of Bluetooth so we're not sure how they'll pull that off. Throw in a guarantee to receive the latest maps, TomTom's Map Share for crowdsourced routes, and a Help-Me! emergency menu, and you get a pretty comprehensive product. Shame about that €599 (about $893) sticker then. Available in Europe in December.
Well, it seems like South Korean companies aren't fooling around when it comes to getting us riding that newly minted Mobile TV bandwagon. In the wake of LG announcing its first Mobile DTV devices this morning comes Cydle with the P29A PMP. It sports a 2.9-inch touchscreen (see what they did there?), an accelerometer for automatic reorientation, a world clock, and voice recording via a built-in mic. That's a somewhat disappointing goodie list, considering the currently available HD radio-playing P29H (pictured for illustration purposes) also has GPS onboard. Still, you can snap up the A model in Q2 2010 for $199, which seems like a keen price when compared to the $499 Mobile DTV car tuner we've seen before.
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Snoop Dogg, when he’s not busy designing headphones and releasing tracks on Rock Band, fancies himself as a navigational hero, lending his “Snoop Speak” to TomTom.
Guess what, prospective Milestone owners, the Droid's one major advantage over its Euro cousin has just been coded out of existence by those proactive, un-American XDA Developers. The free Google Maps Navigation service, whose US announcement was so shocking as to decimate the stock prices of satnav purveyors Garmin and TomTom, has now been ported to work outside the land of the free as well. Not only that, but you can use the app on other Android devices, meaning your old G1 or Hero can get a breath of fresh air for absolutely free. That is if you don't count the time it takes you to learn how to insert all the code properly and the risk of bricking your device. But we know our readers eat iron nails for breakfast and fashion elegantly optimized code before lunch, so we expect all of you to be using this by day's end, you hear?
