TomTom Go Live 1000 blurs the line between PND and connected tablet


The dedicated GPS market is slowly but steadily shrinking as smartphones gain the same abilities, but yet the major players keep rolling out new devices. The TomTom Go Live 1000 bucks the trend of a semi-smart connected device and instead adds a ton of storage on top of a powerful setup to run a WebKit-based UI along with a ton of connected apps. This just might be the PND we’ve been waiting for — too bad it’s a few years late.

Behind the screen rests a 500MHz ARM CPU, 128MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, and a SIM card. All that power is there to power a new UI based on WebKit’s underpinnings. The system retains a familiar TomTom look and feel but should be a bit more snappy and modern. TomTom’s connected service — TomTom Live — is set to launch in Euroland this coming June and will feed the GPS fuel prices, weather, and traffic info. All this is free for the first 12-months and less than €50 ($67) per year afterwards, which is a tad less than the projected cost in the states.

No word on pricing just yet but if we’re really digging we’re this is going. Low-cost connected services and large screens will keep the GPS market alive while the smartphone market expands. Eventually though, more and more consumers will find the smaller screen on their smartphone just fine and not opt for a secondary device like a GPS.