

Garmin made a surprise announcement last night of a new iPhone competitor. nuvifone (rhymes with “MovieFone”… coincidence?) has an impressive feature set, including:
Quad-band GSM mobile phone
3G HSDPA
3.5-inch touchscreen interface
HTML Web browser
WiFi
Multi-network instant messaging
MMS media messaging
Still & video camera
Automatically geotags photo with the latitude and longitude reference of where the image was taken
MP3 and MPEG4/AAC player
Garmin Online service with constantly-updating information:
Real-time traffic
Fuel prices
Stock prices
Sport scores
News reports
Local events
Weather forecasts
Google applications
Gmail
Google local search
Proximity, location based search (coffee shops near me)
Access to millions of geo-located landmark and sightseeing photographs available through Google’s Panoramio picture sharing site
Best-in-breed GPS capabilities
Preloaded maps of North America, Eastern and Western Europe, or both
Turn-by-turn, voice-prompted directions
Speaks the names of the streets
“Where am I?” feature displays your latitude and longitude coordinates, the nearest address and intersection, and the closest hospitals, police stations and gas stations.
Find your car in an unfamiliar spot or crowded parking lot by automatically marking the position in which it was last removed from the vehicle mount.
nuvifone is based on Garmin’s proprietary OS and according to Electronista the Google applications allow it to search for local businesses, check traffic patterns and weather. Photos (or videos) taken with the built-in camera are automatically geotagged for positioning in location-based services.
Garmin hasn’t announced the price or carrier partner yet but expect details to follow shortly.