Approximately 37 years ago, John, Peter—PLEASE COME BACK, PETER!—, and I attended a Garmin press conference where it announced some sort of original story titletouchscreen phone. There was genuine interest—I’m hesitant to call it “excitement”—for a few days, but just as time heals all wounds, time also makes you forget; we’ve since forgotten all about said Garmin phone. Until now! Yes, Garmin just announced that the phone, officially the nuvifone G60, will be available on AT&T beginning on October 4. It’ll set you back $299 with a two-year contract and a $100 rebate. Nuviphone Premium costs $5.99 a month. You do see what the Palm Pre is going for these days, right? Just sayin’.
The biggest selling point, of course, is the tight integration with Garmin’s GPS software; it’s sure to be superior to some rinky-dink iPhone App, at least.
Other than that, it does appear to be a fairly standard phone. Yes, touchscreen phones are no longer “special.” It’ll browse the Web, but we don’t know what type of browser it is; it has a 3.0-megapixel camera, but it doesn’t look like you can take video with it; there’s a bunch of points of interests built-in to the phone, which is probably more useful to city dwellers than country folk. “Honey, there’s a Dennys 30 miles from here!” versus “Honey, there’s some crazy Asian/Soulfood fusion joint 30 blocks from here!”
All that said, neither I nor anyone else here have held the phone, so maybe, despite the fact that it’s been so, so long, it’s actually a fine phone.
And yes, that is AT&T’s Seth giving us a tour of the device up there. Again, it doesn’t look bad at all, but a lot has changed since it was first announced.