latest
Android 2.1 Update For T-Mobile Garminfone Available For Manual Installation; All 10 Owners Ecstatic
Granted, this particular bit of news is only valuable to the (very) small crowd of people who purchased the T-Mobile Garminfone, but it's nice to hear nonetheless. The good news: Garmin has released an update to Android 2.1 (Éclair). The bad: it's a manual update.
Garmin CFO Kevin Rauckman stated on the 9th that Garmin may be leaving the mobile phone part of its business on the side of the highway. Garmin has released exactly one Android phone that was met with limited success, to put it nicely. They released the Garminphone with an outdated version of Android and put it on the 4th largest (out of 4) wireless carrier in the US (T-Mobile). The cards were definitely not stacked in their favor.
T-Mobile has been forced to lower the price of the Garminfone as a result of very weak demand - analyst estimates peg the number sold around 20,000. The phone was priced at $199.99, a price most reviewers agreed was too high for a phone with relatively weak specs:
Sorry for the punny title – that actually hurt a bit to write. So, it seems that Engadgets received a fairly credible picture announcing that the Garminfone (did they really have to call it the ‘Garminfone’? I keep typing ‘phone’) should be available on June 2nd for the rumored $199 price point – as long as you’re OK with a 2 year contract.
The Garminfone is coming to T-Mobile very soon, so in order to help us figure out whether it is just a useless and superfluous toy or a candidate for your next phone/gadget, Engadget grabbed a review unit and put it to the test.
If you've been waiting for Garmin's half-GPS/half-Android-phone (phonotaur?) Garminfone to drop, you now won't have to wait too much longer.
A number of real-life photos of the new Android-powered Garmin phone, called Garminfone just got leaked to TmoNews.com. With the full Garmin navigational experience loaded into the phone, Garminfone is clearly directed towards those of us that may be directionally challenged.