Garmin makes the good portable sailing master out there . Millions of people , including me , are fans . But follow notoriously lengthy delay , the first Nuvifone should have been euthanized , not put on AT&T shelf next to the iPhone — for $ 100 more .
TheNuvifone G60 GPS telephone is out this workweek for $ 300 , an absurdly high price for even a smartphone in this old age . But the Nuvifone is not a smartphone , not even a clever one .
https://gizmodo.com/garmin-nuvifone-g60-is-finally-happening-on-at-t-oct-5370106
What’s Bad
• The insubordinate touch screen remind me of phones circa 2006 , bad for everything but heavy - push tapping .
• There ’s no homescreen button , to quickly take you out of a mire of menus .
• It ’s crashy — silver screen freeze twice while I was write this , forcing a full - on hard restart .
• Sometimes the accelerometer just closure work on completely .
• The tv camera is atrocious — if the hardware clit need for the shutter even works — and there ’s no TV of any form .
• The World Wide Web browser app is all but useless , because it relies heavily on zooming in and out , and the touchscreen easy confuses swiping and tap .
• The port looks coolheaded at first , but there are strange design choices throughout . Want an example ? The QWERTY keyboard only appears in horizontal fashion — it ’s ABCDE in vertical mode . Also , no “ Where To ? ” button , a la one-time Nuvi twist .
• You have to pay a $ 5 / calendar month premium cathexis to check the weather , dealings , local events and other help — all of which can be found on free apps from real smartphone political program ( not just iPhone ) .
• Even when using electronic mail ( let alone calendar ) , there does n’t seem to be any awareness of the rest of the internet : The email wizard allow you enrol any speech and password , but it does n’t say whether it can really get ring armour . This persistent piddling phone is still trying to log onto my Hotmail account .
• The shelling ran down whole during my first solar day of examination , after a few speech sound call and some pocket-size GPS pilotage , and the assault and battery indicant deteriorate tight when it ’s just on understudy . In fairness , you should n’t use this phone or any other phone without a car charger , if you intend to use it for GPS seafaring .
• There is no car charger . It ’s missing the$7 USB - to - cig - light transcriber . AT&T probably wanted to betray it individually , but when I ask at my local AT&T storehouse , they did n’t even hold it .
• Since it ’s an AT&T phone , it has to vie with the iPhone and other handset that are right smart salutary . If the Nuvifone were on Verizon , it would at least have a web vantage in sure markets that it could lord over the iPhone herd . But even Apple haters would have a hard meter spending an extra $ 100 on this — with the exact same headphone reception .
The Verdict
Unlike most reviews , this finding of fact is n’t for you . If you made it to the remainder of the newspaper headline , you already know what to do . But because I handle , I think I ’d say something to the makers :
Garmin : Please get your act together in the headphone space . You have two choices : Either make tidy useful navigation apps for the major platform , or make real phones . There ’s no such thing as a PND that also realise telephone set birdsong ( though I suppose that was the original architectural plan for the G60 ) .
You are expectant in your field , but even team up with Asus , you are n’t near than the lowliest phone maker , so you have to bring catchup : Pick a mobile OS and stick with it . Skip Windows Mobile ( for now ) and make a serious energy into Android . To do that , you ’ll have to see what everyone else is doing . Do n’t just set yourself up to lose in the terminal to an HTC running a TeleNav or TomTom app . You ’re good at making tough ironware , so why not differentiate with a rugged outdoor Android smartphone ?
I urge you to re - consider your premature departure from the mobile app business . Garmin stigma equity would trade a lot of iPhone apps , peculiarly if they came with the Nuvi interface most people love more than TomTom ’s or Navigon ’s . It may spite the egotism a turn to concentre on computer software instead of hardware , but I just do n’t see how successful you could be by doing what everyone else is doing , only later and worse . I did n’t intend to be this harsh , but I also did n’t expect the G60 to be so risky .
In Brief
The home screenland is cool for a dumbphone , with three major clit and a slider of auxiliary pick
The navigational experience I have enjoyed on regular Nuvis is here , almost all intact , but since you could already get that without buying this speech sound , it ’s not a major addition
See above — like , every undivided word of this piece
Garminreviewworstmodo
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