According to “sources in the industry”, Garmin’s upcoming Nuvifone will actually be manufactured by the ubiquitous and varied ASUS. Nuvifone, is one of the richest-featured touchscreen handsets, and Garmin announced that it prided itself on manufacturing its own products and never outsourcing. Part of the reason behind this has to do with the complexity of making a phone, the validation process involved and the lack of in-house expertise when it comes to RF related technologies. ASUS, is the giant Taiwanese company that produces, among other things, Pocket PCs, smartphones, notebooks, motherboards and so on. ASUS is also well known as the Taiwan-based maker chiefly contributing its know-how in RF technologies. Garmin is famous for its GPS-related products and technologies. Its first device to fall into the “mobile phone” category, the nuvifone, will be a hybrid between a smartphone and a navigation device, coming with the following features: a 3.5 inch touchscreen display, Wi-Fi, GSM and 3G connectivity, full HTML browser, advanced email capabilities, Music and video players and a good photo camera. Plus, of course, high-end GPS capabilities, with maps, Google search, easy to use navigation menus and so on. Well, according to DigiTimes, ASUS is the company to combine all these into the nuvifone, while Garmin will take care of the GPS and navigation aspects. Nuvifone will arrive some time in Q4 to the U.S, although no mention of other markets was made.
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