TeleNav launches standalone GPS device, shoots you with a Shotgun

Thanks to the eagerness of TeleNav’s web designers, they’ve let slip one of their most-closely guarded secrets — a stand-alone internet connected GPS device. We’ve got a TeleNav Shotgun in hand, but we weren’t prepared to fire that bad boy off until Monday. Since there’s this little slip-up though, we’ll give you some first impressions.

Marketing and timing aspects aside, the TeleNav Shotgun is actually a pretty sexy unit in terms of appearance. The UI is pretty clean and you could sort of think of it as a big brother to the TeleNav Navigator GPS software you have on your cell phone. The Shotgun uses a built-in SIM card (they won’t let us say which carrier, but it is GSM, obviously) to let you get real-time traffic, locations, restaurant ratings, look-ups, and whatever else your heart desires. The unit does work as advertised and we didn’t have any real hiccups. All in all it’s not bad, it’s just not great and we really don’t see a place in the market for this thing. We’ll let you ponder if you think you’re going to get one or not while we put the finishing touches on our review. We’re riding Shotgun, bitchez.

Tags: GPS, GSM, telenav

Jonathan S. Geller