Garmin Asus Nuvifone Windows Mobile 6.5.3 phone reviewed

Garmin-Nuvifone M10 next to the the old Nuvifone M20

Chinese website GPC has managed to get their hands on the Garmin Asus M10 and revealed a device much more interesting than the very unsuitable M20.

The note the device is well specified, with a  Qualcomm’s 600MHz CPU, 512 MB RAM and ROM, built-in 4G Flash, MicroSD card, 3.5G HSDPA, GPS, WIFI, BT and many more functions.

They feel the design imitated the iPhone somewhat, and was quite plasticky, with the white version looking better than the black. Unfortunately the screen is plastic and not glass, and therefore not very scratch resistant. They were happy with the 1500 mAh battery and the 3.5 mm headphone jack, but complained the MicroSD card was under the battery, which was less than ideal.

They were also happy with the lanyard hole, which in Asia is very popular for tying trinkets to, and which has been eschewed by HTC in their latest HD2.

They liked the Garmin user interface but noted it was difficult to disable it, needing to change registry entries.

The Garmin UI seemed to have some extra innovation, with the status bar dropping down a notification list, like on TouchFlo3D, but with a search bar included, which seems like a good idea, and if text is highlighted at the time it will automatically do a search.

 

The Garmin software also included the mandatory weather widget, and the music and photo interface also looked very good. Regarding music playback however they did complain of noise on high volumes. The volume of the speakers was however very good. They note also that the volume settings on the headphones are different from those used on the speaker phone, which is useful for preventing ear injury from an inadvertent wrong adjustment.

The GPS sensitivity was good, both on a cold start, with a 1 min fix, and a warm start, which offered a 10 second fix. The bundled navigation software managed its 3D interface very well and smoothly, and had a good collection of POI.      

Performance was good with the 600 Mhz processor, and the device featured a nice task manager, activated by a long press on the windows key, which can be used to close applications if things get bogged down a bit.

In terms of video playback, they note that DIX playback was hardware accelerated, with the device being able to play 1.3 Mbs VGA quality video smoothly at 24 FPS. WVGA video playback was however not smooth, dropping to around 20 fps.

They complained that the 5 megapixel camera appears to lack auto-focus, which makes macro shots impossible.

They note stability was reasonable, and was expected to improve with the final firmware.

They concluded the device was excellent value for the budget conscious, but of course did not unseat the HTC HD2 on the high end.

Read their full review here.

Via Slashgear.com