Garmin have announced the new Garmin nüvifone, a new GPS phone that's been designed as a GPS device first and a mobile phoen second. The nüvifone is Garmin's response to the increasing encroachment of their territory by the mobile phone companies such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, each of whom have either released or will shortly release a GPS-equipped phone.

However, whereas these phones are phones first with GPS tacked on as a feature, the new Garmin nüvifone does what Garmin do best - navigation - and then adds a host of superb mobile phone features into the mix to create what looks set to be a superb mobile phone that will really take the fight to Nokia and co.

More details and pictures of the Garmin nüvifone after the jump.

Later than I'd have liked (I've been moving house), here's the first of several dozen reports from CES 2008, where GPS devices were being shown off in their droves. First up is the new top-end Garmin Nuvi 880, which features a lush 4.3" screen, real time traffic updates, Bluetooth, and voice recognition, which apparently actually works!

The new Nuvi 880 comes with a wireless push to talk remote that you attach to the steering wheel, letting you talk to your Nuvi when you want to (or are bored or lonely!), without it thinking you're talking to it when you're actually talking to your passengers.

More details and pics of the Garmin Nuvi 880 after the jump.

A new service by Nudar.com (Note: NSFW!) has been launched that adds a whole new set of Points of Interest to your GPS device. current GPS devices consider such things as ATMs, museums, airports and golf courses as POIs worthy enough of inclusion. Not so Nudar - for them, only nudity counts as a real point of interest!

Yes, Nudar is the first web site that aims to list the world's strip joints, nudist resorts, and all things, well, nude, and serve them up to an eager public complete with GPS coordinates! GPS pr0n? Guess the GPS market has finally reached maturity!

[Source: GPS magazine]

Nav N Go launched their 3D navigation software, the Nav N Go iGO8 at CES 2008, showing off an incredibly detailed navigation service that doesn't just show roads, it also shows a 3D version of the terrain over which you're travelling. It doesn't stop with terrain, either - the Nav N go iGO8 also offers road elevation, landmarks and buildings, and renders them all in glorious 3D, showing almost 13 miles of landscape in a single view.

More details of the Nav N Go iGO8 after the jump.

Google caused a stir a few weeks back with the announcement of its new mobile phone platform, Android. Of particular note was the control it gave developers over the features of mobile phones - features such as built-in GPS and Wi-Fi receivers. However, all we were given was the tantalising technical details of the new platform, and not much else - no sample applications, or even any real idea of what could be achieved with the new platform.

Now, though, a few details are starting to emerge of just what can be done with it by enterprising software developers - developers such as Wi2P Entertainment, who've used Android's ability to control a phone's GPS receiver to create a new Augmented Reality game called Wi-Fi Army.

You can see a preview video of Wi-Fi Army after the jump.

Medion have decided to add possibly the most useful of all features to their new Medion GoPal P4425 GPS device - a foolproof anti-theft system. It's foolproof simply because Medion have added a finger print scanner to it, so the only way you can use it is if it recognizes your fingerprint.

It's about time that the Sat-Nav companies finally paid attention to the rising problem of Sat-Nav theft. I mean, it's not exactly rocket science is it?! You have a device in your car worth upwards of £400 or so, which can be stolen by the simple use of a large rock through the windscreen. They're devices literally just begging to be stolen, so it's amazing that no thought has been given to protecting them from thieves until now.

More details after the jump.

Google and Tom Tom have announced a new partnership that will see Google maps integrate tightly with Tom Tom GPS devices (see video above). The new service will enable users of Google maps to send addresses directly to their Tom Tom Sat Nav unit via a "Send To GPS" button. The location will then be downloaded to the Tom Tom device via the Tom Tom Home PC software.

I love the convergence that's going in the GPS world at the moment. GPS devices used to be an isolated niche market, dominated by a few key players who simply offered ways for people to get from A to B. Now, though, the whole GPS market has become a hot new field with both the mobile phone companies and now the search engine giants fighting for a share of it.

[Source: NaviGadget]

GPS devices are great for navigating your way around unfamiliar places, and even try to route you around traffic hotspots. However, they've been notoriously unreliable at spotting traffic jams, as they either discover them too late (i.e. when the traffic around you has just stopped), or still think there's a jam even when it cleared hours ago.

Now, though, Tom Tom has a new solution that combines its legendary Sat-Nav technology with Vodafone's mobile phone network to identify traffic jams as they happen, and give you real time information on the length of the jam, the time you'll be sat in it if you hit it, and how far away you are from it.

More details after the jump.

TeleAtlas is one of the big mapping companies, and is currently being taken over by Tom Tom. It has a huge database of locations and points of interest, and provides the key data that Tom Tom and others use to present your location and route on your GPS device.

However, the traditional view has always been an overhead 2D rendering, or at the most, a quasi-3D rendering that still shows no height for any landmark.

All that may be about to change, though, as TeleAtlas is working on 3D renderings of popular landmarks. Just check out these pictures of the Fenway park stadium in Boston.

I've waffled on a bit recently about Nokia, Garmin, Microsoft and Google all battling it out between them for a share in the lucrative location-based services market. For those who've not read my earlier posts on location-based services, they're seen as advertising nirvana - ads that don't just advertise a product, but actually advertise a product that's within a 5 minute radius of you and your wallet!

Now a new company has stepped into the ring with another business model - super-cheap GPS devices that are subsidized by advertising in the same way that many Web sites (such as this one) are. The company is called adNav, and their new GPS device Boomerang gives you a plethora of location-based services, including location-based ads.