GPS

It’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen anything fresh from FineDigital, but the firm has just introduced the slim and seductive FineDrive X700 over in South Korea. Humorously, the company is asserting that this particular unit is the first of its kind to offer voice recognition, but even a light amount of research would help it understand such a statement is far from being true. Nevertheless, the unit does look to offer a spacious screen and a bundled remote, but details beyond that are unfortunately absent.

Move over, Dash Express. Take a seat, Garmin and Tom Tom. As of right now there’s only one GPS unit worth buying, and it’s this trick Knight Rider unit from Mio that issues directions in the voice of KITT. Yep, Mr. Feeney William Daniels is gonna be right there with you, although we doubt he’ll be as tolerant of your skin-tight pants and unkempt chest hair this time around. Underneath the hood it’s basically the same Mio kit as you’d expect, only it boots up by saying “Hello Michael, where do you want to go today?” uses a cartoon Trans-Am to represent your car, and features dual LED scanner lights on each side. Yes, we’re in love. $270 is all it’ll take when this thing hits in a few months — 10 points to the first reader to get a picture of it inside a KITT replica.

[Via Autoblog]

Leave it to QSTARZ to innovate so dramatically upon the tried-and-true Bluetooth GPS receiver design. Okay, so maybe it just created two new 66-channel ones that are exceptionally small. Up first is the new BT-Q1300, a “miniature” device that’s dubbed the world’s smallest travel recorder. Continuing on with superlatives, we see “the best” of the best in the BT-Q890, which measures in at 60- x 40- x 7-millimeters and is somehow also the “world’s smallest GPS receiver.” We’re on to your fuzzy math, QSTARZ, and we don’t like it one bit.

[Via NaviGadget]

Read - BT-Q1300
Read - BT-Q890

It’s one thing to describe a UI, it’s another to see it in action. Laptop Mag just posted nearly 5 minutes of finger-flicking, auto-rotating, rubber banding video of Garmin’s hotly anticipated Nuvifone. There’s even a brief glimpse of the touch keyboard in all its landscape, predictive text glory. Sure Garmin only showed the working aspects of the not-ready-for-prime-time prototype. Regardless, it’s enough to keep us impressed and awaiting the Q4 release. Video just beyond the read link.

It’s about time someone got his hands on a working Garmin Nuvifone. The folks at Laptop Magazine were lucky enough to spend some time with a prototype, reporting that the interface was snappy, the screen is nice and big, and the UI appears to be very GPS-centric. They tried the QWERTY keypad which is “spacious enough” and uses an auto-complete dictionary. The main interface presents a row of icons for calling, searching, and mapping, and finger swipes stream them across the screen. Included apps, at least in this model, were SMS, Google Search, email, and media player. All said, some apps didn’t load properly and some of the display units were frozen in bug limbo, but we’ll give Garmin a pass there as these were clearly early test units. So a couple questions remain: Is it still coming out Q3 of this year, and will it still run $499? Is it coming in white? Follow the read link for more impressions and hands-on pictures.

We’re sorry, we know Garmin puts a lot of TLC and, um, maps into these things, but we’re still having trouble swallowing the $1000 pricetag the company is placing on its new hotness, the nuvi 880. The device is finally up for pre-order at Amazon, so if you want to be first in line for speech recognition and the other perks this unit will bring, now would be a good time to start selling off the kids.

[Via NaviGadget]

We aren’t suggesting that these problems are widespread or anything, but a fair number of users over at AVIC411 seem to be having all sorts of issues with their (admittedly pricey) F-Series navigators. According to owners, the issues range from complete lock-ups to distorted voice commands to quirky iPod interactions — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Have any of you taken the plunge only to find a litany of problems after installation? Or is your unit humming along just fine? Chime in below and let us know what’s up.

The folks at NaviGadget got a couple reader-submitted shots of a white Nuvifone, but there’s no telling just now how legit they are. Garmin just shows a black version of its phone — which is still slated for Q3 at a purported $500 pricepoint — on its own site, but perhaps this teensy supposed leak means there’s more news in store for the Nuvifone camp in the near future.

As if the iPhone 3G launch could really have any more misinformation floating around, we’ve got yet another tidbit that needs clarification. Shortly after Apple’s second iPhone was announced, out flew a report from Reuters suggesting that TomTom already had iPhone navigation software ready to go. French site Mac Generation was able to get ahold of TomTom spokesperson Yann Lafargue, and here’s the gist of what he had to say. First off, the aforementioned Reuters statement was said to be inaccurate, though he did affirm that an iPhone version of the software was running in the labs and working “pretty well.” Unfortunately, the question of “will you guys ship this for the iPhone?” was answered with a “We don’t know” style response, but he did clarify that the questionable SDK verbiage we saw wasn’t an obstacle at all. Check out the full interview in the read link below — hope you’re fluent in French and / or machine translation!