Fortunately, TestFreaks might have the answer. By scouring the Web and compiling the ratings for each device from a variety of individual reviews, and then adding user opinions into the mix, they’ve come up with a unique ratings system that shows the top 50 GPS devices that are ranked according to user satisfaction.

Actually, they do more than that – they rank all of the devices they list (hundreds and hundreds of them!) according to user satisfaction, but the first 50 are shown on the first page.

To keep things slightly more simple, we’ve used a bit of RSS trickery to provide you with a list of their top 20 GPS devices, ranked by user satisfaction. Better still, the chart below (after the jump) is dynamic, and is updated whenever TestFreaks’ top 20 is updated, meaning it’s always fresh.

[Source: TestFreaks GPS Navigation Devices]

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.

The Garmin nüvifone as a GPS Device

The Garmin Nuvi-Phone is a super-sleek touchscreen mobile phone with huge 3.5″ display that’s designed to be seen easily in a car when being used to navigate. This is one of the primary differences between the nüvifone and other GPS phones – the nüvifone can easily be used as an in-car GPS device, whereas the GPS phones from the mobile phone manufacturers have screens that are too small for easy viewing when travelling other than on foot.

Switching between phone and GPS couldn’t be easier either. Just slot the nüvifone into dash-mounted Sat-Nav cradle, and it instantly switches itself into GPS mode, turning on the navigation menu, and letting you use it just as you would a normal Sat-Nav device.

Naturally, you also get hands free calling from the Nuvi-Phone – what would be the point of building in phone functionality if you weren’t going to use it as a phone?!

The Garmin nüvifone as a mobile phone

Speaking of which, how does the nüvifone compare to its rivals from the mobile phone companies when squaring up to them on their own turf – phone features?

Well, surprisingly well as it happens. The nüvifone isn’t exactly running at the back of the pack. It features HSDPA for super-fast 3.5G data transfer (up to 3.6Mbps), a glorious looking full featured mobile Web browser that looks great on its huge screen, email, camera, video camera, and MP3 player – in other words, everything you’d expect from a top-end mobile phone!

It does more than that, though, as Garmin have really exploited its GPS features. As well as letting you take your own pics, the nüvifone also gives you access to millions of geo-located landmark and sightseeing photographs available through Google’s Panoramio picture sharing site, and will navigate you their exact locations at the touch of a button,

In addition, you can take a photo yourself, and the nüvifone will save its exact latitude and longitude co-ordinates, which can then be used to direct you back to the exact location by the nüvifone from wherever else in the world you happen to travel to.

Or simply email the photo to a friend with another nüvifone, and they too can be routed to the location using their nüvifone – all at the touch of a button.

This will soon be one of the new features that come with all GPS phones, until we eventually wonder how we ever did without them. I’ve just moved into a new flat, for example, and had to give directions to 15 different people for my flat warming party at the weekend. How much easier would it have been simply to have taken a photo of my front door and emailed it to them all, knowing their GPS phone would direct them to the right address?!

You can imagine navigating to pubs in new locations, job interviews, business meetings or beautiful views of the countryside, just by viewing a picture and clicking “navigate to this place.” Just remember, the nüvifone did it first!

The Garmin nüvifone release date is the third quarter of 2008, by which time Sony Ericsson will have a range of GPS phones out, Samsung will have released its new Nokia N95-killer, the Samsung G810, and Nokia will have replaced the N95 with an even better GPS phone. Mobility is the new name of the game in the GPS market it seems – let battle commence!

[Source: SlashPhone]

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.

Being a top-end GPS device, the Garmin Nuvi 880 also offers a few other bells and whistles as well. MP3 player, FM transmitter, photo viewer and MSN direct are all included, as is a wireless “send to GPS” function that lets you send new Points of Interests to the 880 if the 6 million already built into the thing aren’t enough!

Mind you, I’m guessing none of the POIs from Nudar are in there, so it’s a handy way of loading your 880 up with some points of really interestingness!

The Garmin Nuvi 880 should be out later in 2008.

[Source: GPSMagazine]

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]

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

As you can see from these pics of the iG08’s rendering of Las Vegas, the level of detail is stunning and really adds to the whole navigation experience. Nav N Go aren’t content with 3D renderings, though – they predict that by 2012, 95% of European GPs devices will have some form of photo-realism.

Better still, the iGO8 software isn’t just destined for GPS devices. Nav N Go also announced that the iGO8 will find its way into Sony’s PSP Playstation Portable from March 2008, opening up a whole new range of services for Sony’s slow selling games machine..

[Source: Aving.net]

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.


Augmented Reality is kind of like reverse Virtual-Reality: rather than entering a virtual world, you stay in the real world, but with virtual features overlaid. In the case of Wi-Fi Army, you engage in a first person shooter game that takes place in the real world. You find your opponent via your phone’s GPS and Wi-Fi receivers and Google Maps, and shoot him via the camera phone.

The game works out whether you’ve hit your opponent or not by recognizing the picture of him when you upload it to the Wi-Fi Army web server. Of course, he must have registered with the service first, and also indicated that he’s happy to play the game before you go around shooting him!

Indeed, after registering, you can be contacted by any other player within a 300 foot radius, as the game works out your location and the location of any other players within this area. You then select which player you want to play with, and if they accept, you’re both sent pictures of each other, and the game then commences, with you both set on locating each other and trying to be the first to take a photo of the other (effectively shooting them).

You’re also able to keep up with the location of your opponent via Google Maps, which effectively turns your current location (such as a shopping mall) into a battleground.

It’s this that makes Wi-Fi Army an augmented reality game, turning a normal situation such as a shopping trip into a hunting game in which a previously random shopper (or more likely your friend) suddenly becomes your prey.

Ethical considerations aside (do you really want to let yourself be effectively stalked by a complete stranger who may be take the whole idea of hunting down a stranger way too seriously, and not be content with simply taking your photo?!), Wi-Fi Army provides a novel use of mobile phones’ location-aware abilities, and shows what can be done with location-based services when the whole mobile phone handset is opened up to software developers.

Wi-Fi Army isn’t released yet, but then nor is a Google Android-compliant mobile phone. As a first stab at using the potential of such an open platform, though, it shows real promise, and gives us a flavour of the type of new location-based services we can expect when Google Android handsets become available next year.

[Source: Wi-Fi Army]

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.

In addition to fingerprint detection, the Medion GoPal P4425 also offers bluetooth, voice recognition and text-to-speech, RDS-TMC traffic receiver, and an FM transmitter that lets drivers use their car’s audio system for voice guidance.

You even get some scenery on the horizon of the 3D map!

[Source: NaviGadget]

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]

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.

Existing traffic jam services work either by a series of cameras dotted around the country keeping tabs on the traffic flow (such as the TrafficMaster system, which uses 7,500 cameras and sensors around the UK), or by monitoring the movement of GPS-tracked vehicles, such as AA vans and National Express coaches.

Although these services work, they’re not fool-proof, as the sensor network only covers part of a country, while the vehicle-monitoring service only gives a snap-shot of the area immediately surrounding the vehicles fitted with the devices. Obviously this area tends to be the main motorways and trunk roads, so again, coverage is limited.

In contrast, Tom Tom’s new service, called High Definition (HD) Traffic, works by monitoring the mobile phones connected to Vodafone’s mobile phone network. Not any specific mobile phone – the service doesn’t track individual users – but tens of thousands, building up a profile of how fast they’re moving, where they’re moving, and whether they suddenly seem to be slowing down.

Effectively, anyone with a Vodafone mobile phone that’s switched on becomes an information provider. The phone’s location is identified by its connection to its nearest basestation, and irrelevant mobile phone signals, such as those from pedestrians or cyclists, are filtered out by sophisticated algorithms that are able to recongise movement patterns, and so focus only on the movements of vehicles.

The service can therefore build up a picture of traffic movement across an entire country, and this can be relayed back to individual Tom Tom units via the mobile phone network. The Tom Tom GPS device is therefore updated far more frequently than current devices, providing a comprehensive country-wide service that’s updated in near real-time.

According to the Sunday Times, the service works flawlessly. Its reporter, Simon Kurs, used the service in Tom’s Tom’s native Holland, and was warned of an impending traffic jam up ahead. “Before me the unit displayed the distance to a traffic jam, the time it would take to reach it, and how long the delay would last,” he wrote. “We were told it would be two minutes to reach the jam, and that we would be delayed by four minutes; it was right about both.”

This is a fantastic new innovation, and should be a genuine benefit to the millions of commuters who dread the daily grind to work. Traffic jams are bad enough on their own, but the thing that really makes them bad is the feeling of the sudden loss of control. You’ve no idea how long you’re going to be sat in one for, when and where it ends, and whether you should turn off at the nearest junction (and possibly add 10 miles to your route), or whether it’s better to ride it out.

With Tom Tom and Vodafone’s new service, you have all that data at your fingertips, so even if the Sat-Nav device can’t find a better route around the jam, at least you’ll know how long you’ll be waiting for.

It’s also an innovative use of the mobile phone network, and shows the power of convergence of these two mighty 21st century devices. Just as mobile phones are becoming fully-fledged GPS devices in their own right, while GPS devices add SIM cards and Bluetooth, now we have Sat-Nav and mobile networks converging to offer us navigational solutions previously undreamed of.

[Source: Sunday Times]