Garmin-Asus announces nüvifone A50 and M10

Your smartphone has GPS?  Well, my GPS handheld has a cellphone!  Garmin-Asus has released information about two new phones slated to launch under the nüvifone model-line soon, a week ahead of MWC, dubbed the A50 and the M10, rocking Android (version unspecified) and Windows Mobile 6.5.3 respectively.

The A50 is said to have “more location technology than any other smartphone”.  If anyone is to make good on a marketing line such as that, it’d be the folks over at Garmin.  Sporting a 3.5″ HVGA capacitive touchscreen, integrated 4GB Flash drive, microSD card slot, 3 MP camera with auto-focus, and an accelerometer, Garmin places the phone near the top of the middle market Android devices.

“The Garmin-Asus M10 is our answer to people’s need for work-life balance.”  Garmin attempts to cater to the existing Windows Mobile community, and is marketing it as a business oriented device.  Running the latest Windows Mobile 6.5.3, the device touts a 3.5″ WVGA capacitive touchscreen, 512MB RAM, 512 ROM, 4GB of integrated Flash memory, and a 5 MP camera.

Look for these devices to drop in Asian and European markets in the first half of 2010.  No word on US availability.

Windows Mobile 6.5.3 change log

We touched on this a bit in the podcast as well as when CES was taking place. Here we have the official change log for the new Windows Mobile 6.5.3 update and like we said, it seems to be very touch focused. Though the jump from .5 to .5.3 doesn’t seem that significant, this update has some serious changes. Here is the change log:

Ease of Use features

* Capacitive touchscreen support
* Platform to enable multi-touch
* Touch controls throughout system (no need for stylus)
* Consistent Navigation
* Horizontal scroll bar replaces tabs (think settings>system>about
screen)
* Magnifier brings touch support to legacy applications
* Simplified out-of-box experience with fewer steps
* Drag and drop icons on Start Screen

IE Browser Performance

* Page load time decreased
* Memory management improved
* Pan & flick gestures smoothed
* Zoom & rotation speed increased

Quality and Customer Satisfaction features

* Updated runtime tools (.NET CF 3.5, SQL CE 3.1)
* Arabic read/write document support
* Watson (error reporting) improvements and bug fixes

They seem to have focused primarily on the touch interface and ease of use. They added capacitive and multi-touch support, bigger buttons that are easier to use, simplified user experience, and some changes to mobile IE.  Perhaps these are the changes needed to make the mobile browser on Windows Phone comparable to the likes of Android, WebOS, and iPhone OS. They also mention in parenthesis (No need for a stylus). That is a feat that cannot be ignored. Microsoft has been stumbling with their stylus interface for so long. To see them finally go for an all out touch experience is quite pleasing. Now we wait to get this update on the HD2 for T-Mobile so we can really see what Microsoft intended for Windows Phone 6.5. Of course that is until Windows Phone 7 comes out.

[Via ZDnet]