Asustek confirmed Monday that the Garmin-ASUS joint venture it entered into with GPS giant Garmin two years ago will end early next year. The confirmation comes following last week’s report that the unsuccessful venture would come to an end when the companies’ deal expires in January 2011. With the popularity of navigation apps for smartphones exploding over the past few years, the joint venture seemingly started as an experiment that posed a single question: are consumers interested in a product ...

It was all but written in the stars, and now it is also written in the Chinese paper Economic Daily — Garmin will soon be un-ASUS’d and ASUS is losing its Garmin. The two companies will reportedly not be renewing a two-year contract that birthed such mediocre smartphones as the Nuvifone M20 and T-Mobile’s Garminfone. Truth be told, each of the aforementioned handsets provided a navigation experience that was well above average when it comes to phones, but a great integrated nav experience seemin...

Any smartphone worth a darn has GPS capabilities, but some are more adept at finding their way than others. After getting a reputation for a company that takes it sweet-ass time launching a handset, Garmin-ASUS today announced two new handsets in the nüvifone A50 and nüvifone M10. First up is the A50. An Android device with a 3.5″ HVGA touchscreen display, 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA connectivity, 4GB of internal memory and accelerometer, the A50 is said to be one heck of a pathfinder thanks in part to ...

Well boys and girls, it looks like the G60 might not be vaporware here in the US after all. An official announcement finally puts the G60 on AT&T store shelves this coming Sunday for $299.99 on a 2-year contract after a $100 mail-in rebate. That might seem a bit high at first, but considering there’s no subscription fee required for navigation it’s really not a bad deal. After all, it’ll cost you the same amount or more to score an iPhone 3GS with a solid non-subscription nav app. Regard...

While many of you spent last night watching grown men pummel one another into submission, we here at BGR put in some over time so we could get to the bottom of the pricing of some upcoming AT&T smartphones. And just as you would expect, we’ve come through. First off we have two HTC offerings, the Tilt2 (Touch Pro2) and Pure (Touch Diamond2). On contract and after applying $50 MIRs, we’ve heard the Tilt2 will be $299.99 while the Pure will go for $199.99. Off contract, you’re looking at $...

One of our oh so trusty ninjas just hit us up with a fantastic-looking pre-launch list for AT&T. These phones listed are not launched yet but are reportedly coming soon. Just remember that coming soon could mean anywhere from two weeks to three months but they’re in the pipeline and now officially confirmed to hit AT&T. These include:BlackBerry 9700 in charcoal Garmin Nuvifone G60HTC Tilt 2, HTC Tilt 2 without cameraHTC Pure (believe it’s the HTC Snap)If we’re missing a couple on the...

It was a simpler time. The economy was the last thing on most people’s minds, Dane Cook was just a weird annoying guy from Waiting, Galvatron ruled over our comments section with an iron fist… And Garmin announced that it would enter the wireless arena with the soon-to-be released nuvifone. A lot has changed since then but one thing has remained constant over this historic 18-month period — no nuvifone. Believe it or not however, that might actually change in the near future. Despite having ...

So much for June. During a conference call with analysts last week, Garmin President and COO Cliff Pemble confessed that the nuvifone G60 will be delayed due to technical issues. Stating that creating a smartphone such as the nuvifone G60 is “complicated” and that “bringing one to market that’s built totally from the ground up on a custom Linux platform is not an easy task,” is somewhat of a valid excuse, but we mean c’mon — this handset was announced over 15 months ago a...

It may have taken a year and a half and a second official announcement but it looks like we may finally have word on when the Garmin-ASUS nuvifone is set to hit the streets. Of course we still don’t have any official pricing info or an exact launch date, but a Reuters article from this morning places the nuvifone G60 on store shelves in June. As for which store shelves the G60 will land on, it’s still looking like AT&T is where the smart money is though nothing has been confirmed. The article ...

Garmin and Asus took advantage of Mobile World Congress back in February to announce the second nuvifone-branded handset that will reach market — the nuvifone M20. Despite the fact that the G60 has yet to hit store shelves, Garmin and Asus are seemingly anxious to display the fruits of their joint handset efforts and hey, were not going to complain. The M20 is tiiiiiiiny. Not so tiny that the duo couldn’t stuff a nice bright 2.8-inch VGA (640×480) touchscreen in there, but definitely small co...

Garmin and ASUS have just announced that they’ve entered into a strategic alliance and have subsequently re-branded the Garmin nuvifone as the nuvifone G60. What’s more is that both companies have promised to deliver several devices in 2009 with another device slated to make a charming pirouette entrance at Mobile World Congress. With the entire nuvifone lineup obviously very navigation oriented, the million dollar question is what OS will the lineup will be running. Apparently a ASUS chairman sai...

In a presumably final sneak peek before CES, Garmin has posted a gallery of screenshots of the upcoming Nuvifone interface. Included in the gallery is a look at the home screen, web browser, navigation, email, calendar, camera, geotagging support and more. Hopefully this will whet your appetite for the Nuvifone until we can get a closer look at the handset during CES 2009. Hit the jump for more Nuvifone images than you can bear (more…)

Big news today from everyone’s favorite nav company turned mobile handset company turned “will it ever release its phone?!” company. We all know Garmin joined the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) earlier this year but word is now trickling around the web pointing to some pretty lofty aspirations in terms of the timing for the company’s virgin Android offering. From Tony An, Garmin’s Asia Pacific Marketing Director:Garmin will launch Nuvifone, its first GPS-enabled handset, in the Taiwan m...

Sure it might have been delayed but at least the FCC was kind enough to remind us that the Garmin Nuvifone does in fact still exist. The good news is that Garmin’s sexy nav-centric handset is likely still on track for a belated 1H 2009 release in the US and it does indeed don the 850 and 1900 MHz WCDMA bands needed for some 3.5G love via AT&T. The bad news, for Garmin at least, is that it may soon find itself in a race with Mio and the first to bring its handset to market will likely garner the most...