The nüvifone G60 took nearly two years to go from introduction to on sale at AT&T, and just weeks after its introduction, it has been nearly completely forgotten. Smartphones like Motorola's Droid and HTC's Droid Eris have already snagged the spotlight, and of course, that $300 (on contract) price tag that it debuted with didn't help attract any eyes, either. That said, we're sure at least a few (couple?) of you bit the bullet post-price drop, and now we're overly anxious to hear how you feel about it. After two years, does this thing really live up to the expectations? Are you satisfied with the navigation capabilities? Is the lackluster battery life worrying you yet? Should Garmin-Asus even bother with a second-gen device? Sound off in comments below!

Filed under: Cellphones

How would you change Garmin-Asus' nuvifone G60? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

There wasn't exactly much secrecy left around this one after ads started popping up online, but Walmart's now set aside any doubt about its $300 HP G60-519WM laptop with a listing for it on its website, which also thankfully includes the complete specs for it. Apparently built exclusively for Walmart by HP, this particular model packs a 15.6-inch WXGA display, along with previously rumored specs including a 2.2GHz Celeron 900 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, a LightScribe DVD burner, and some basic Intel GMA 4500M integrated graphics -- not to mention Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit edition for an OS. Not exactly the worst deal for someone looking for bigger, more full-featured alternative to a netbook, to be sure, but we have a feeling this is just a taste of what's to come for bargain hunters on Black Friday.

[Via I4U News, thanks Luigi]

Filed under: Laptops

Walmart's $300 HP G60 laptop gets real, detailed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

It's not quite a $99 Xbox 360, but if this apparent Walmart scan via Kotaku is to be believed, that $199 Arcade version is getting a $100 gift card promotion going into effect this Saturday. In real terms, that boils down to a $234 Xbox 360 Pro for first-time buyers, seeing as you'll be needing that $135, 120GB hard drive, too. Also listed are a Sony Blu-ray player for $148 (we're guessing the currently-MSRP'd $199 BDP-S360), and a $298 HP G60-519WM, which touts a 2.2GHz Intel Celeron, 15.6-inch HD display, Windows 7 Home Premium, 3GB RAM, and a 250GB HDD -- not a bad followup at all for that Compaq CQ60. Some interesting spy shots from the Slick Deals forum seem to give credence to the scan, although we're still playing wait-and-see -- that $100 gift card with the Xbox 360 arcade is almost too good to be true, even if it is just a clever tactic to clear shelf space in the lead-up to Black Friday.

Update: Sure as the sun, an official ad has popped up on Yahoo's front page. Screenshot after the break.

[Thanks, just4onepost]

Read - G60-519WM spotted
Read - $199 Xbox 360 Arcade with $100 gift card?

Continue reading Leaked Walmart ad reveals Xbox 360 Arcade with $100 gift card, $300 HP G60 laptop

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

Leaked Walmart ad reveals Xbox 360 Arcade with $100 gift card, $300 HP G60 laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Our recommended price for the Nuvifone G60 was death, payable by the handset, not the prospective buyer. Until that can be arranged, though, Amazon's plunging $200 discount (on a $300 phone!) will have to do.

To recap the only review we've ever written that didn't even have a "Good" section, the Nuvifone was a failure in about every way that the once-hot handset could've been: It's crashy, it's got a clunky resistive screen, the browser is really, really tough to use, and camera sometimes works, there's a $5/month charge for basic services like weather, traffic and local events, the battery life is horrendous, and the OS acts like a navigation unit firmware with tumorous telecommunications outgrowth. And oh god, that price: $300 with an AT&T contract, which is about how much it'd cost you to buy one iPhone 3G with TomTom and Navigon apps.

So yeah, a price drop was all but inevitable, but it's heartening to see it happen this soon, even if not by Garmin's hand. Next stop: 0. [Amazon via Engadget]

You know what's insulting? Charging $300 for a nuvifone G60 in the year 2009. It's cool, though -- Amazon, as usual, is our knight in shining armor by swooping in with a $99.99 deal on contract, making the idea of a one-trick pony nav phone with a closed platform and hellish browser just a little more palatable. A big, fat caveat emptor still applies, of course.

Filed under: Cellphones

Garmin nuvifone G60 going for $100 on Amazon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

You've been waiting for this day for nearly two years, but before you go and drop three Benjamins on a phone that you're probably assuming is way out of date by now, you should probably hit up Engadget Mobile's review of the thing. It's the nüvifone G60, and the full, unadulterated critique is waiting for you right here. Have a gander, won't you?

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS

Garmin-Asus nuvifone G60 reviewed at Engadget Mobile! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Toshiba's beastly Dynabook was last updated in April, but at the time, Toshiba was still walking around with its chin up and refusing to integrate Blu-ray technology into its products. Now, however, the 18.4-inch Qosmio G60 (Dynabook MX in overseas markets) is finally bringing together a Cell-based SpursEngine HD video co-processor with a Blu-ray drive, ensuring oodles of movie watching bliss for those mettlesome enough to lug this thing around. Other specs include a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo P8700 CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M GPU, 500GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM, twin TV tuners, Windows 7 Home Premium and a 1080p panel. If all goes well, it'll ship next month (at least in Japan) for around ¥220,000 ($2,457), though your guess is as good as ours on a US release.

[Via Engadget Japanese]

Filed under: Laptops

Toshiba finally weds SpursEngine and Blu-ray in 18.4-inch Qosmio G60 laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Garmin makes the best portable navigators out there. Millions of people, including me, are fans. But following notoriously lengthy delays, the first Nuvifone should have been euthanized, not put on AT&T shelves next to the iPhone—for $100 more.

The Nuvifone G60 GPS phone is out this week for $300, an absurdly high price for even a smartphone in this age. But the Nuvifone is not a smartphone, not even a clever one.

What's Bad

• The resistive touchscreen reminds me of phones circa 2006, bad for everything but big-button tapping.

• There's no homescreen button, to quickly take you out of a mire of menus.

• It's crashy—screens froze twice while I was writing this, forcing a full-on hard restart.

• Sometimes the accelerometer just stops working completely.

• The camera is terrible—if the hardware button required for the shutter even works—and there's no video of any kind.

• The web browser is all but useless, because it relies heavily on zooming in and out, and the touchscreen easily confuses swiping and tapping.

• The interface looks cool at first, but there are strange design choices throughout. Want an example? The QWERTY keyboard only appears in horizontal mode—it's ABCDE in vertical mode. Also, no "Where To?" button, a la older Nuvi devices.

• You have to pay a $5/month premium charge to check the weather, traffic, local events and other services—all of which can be found on free apps from real smartphone platforms (not just iPhone).

• Even when using email (let alone calendar), there doesn't seem to be any awareness of the rest of the internet: The email wizard lets you enter any address and password, but it doesn't say whether it can actually get mail. This tenacious little phone is still trying to log onto my Hotmail account.

• The battery ran down completely during my first day of testing, after a few phone calls and some modest GPS navigation, and the battery indicator drops fast when it's just on standby. In fairness, you shouldn't use this phone or any other phone without a car charger, if you intend to use it for GPS navigation.

• There is no car charger. It's missing the $7 USB-to-cig-lighter adapter. AT&T probably wanted to sell it separately, but when I asked at my local AT&T store, they didn't even carry it.

• Since it's an AT&T phone, it has to compete with the iPhone and other handsets that are way better. If the Nuvifone were on Verizon, it would at least have a network advantage in certain markets that it could lord over the iPhone herd. But even Apple haters would have a hard time spending an extra $100 on this—with the exact same phone reception.

The Verdict

Unlike most reviews, this verdict isn't for you. If you made it to the end of the headline, you already know what to do. But because I care, I thought I'd say something to the makers:

Garmin: Please get your act together in the phone space. You have two choices: Either make tidy useful navigation apps for the major platforms, or make real phones. There's no such thing as a PND that also makes phone calls (though I think that was the original plan for the G60).

You are great in your field, but even teamed with Asus, you aren't better than the lowliest phone maker, so you have to play catchup: Pick a mobile OS and stick with it. Skip Windows Mobile (for now) and make a serious push into Android. To do that, you'll have to see what everyone else is doing. Don't just set yourself up to lose in the end to an HTC running a TeleNav or TomTom app. You're good at making tough hardware, so why not differentiate with a rugged outdoor Android smartphone?

I urge you to re-consider your premature departure from the mobile app business. Garmin brand equity would sell a lot of iPhone apps, especially if they came with the Nuvi interface most people love more than TomTom's or Navigon's. It may bruise the ego a bit to focus on software instead of hardware, but I just don't see how successful you can be by doing what everyone else is doing, only later and worse. I didn't mean to be this harsh, but I also didn't expect the G60 to be so bad.

In Brief

The home screen is cool for a dumbphone, with three major buttons and a slider of auxiliary options

The navigational experience I have enjoyed on regular Nuvis is here, almost completely intact, but since you can already get that without buying this phone, it's not a major plus

See above—like, every single word of this piece

There she is. 20 months and 1 day after its original introduction to the world, the Garmin-Asus nüvifone G60 is at long last in our (admittedly sweaty) palms. The highfalutin' smartphone isn't slated to hit AT&T shelves until this Sunday, but we were able to wrangle a retail unit early in order to bring you a sneak peek at what's to come. Frankly, we've been looking forward to this day for a long (long!) time. We've got a soft spot in our hearts for the Garmin navigation UI, and we have to say, that very same look and feel has been beautifully migrated to the mobile space. Upon unwrapping the phone, we were struck by just how classy the whole thing looks. It's plenty thin for being a GPS-turned-phone, light enough to not weigh you down and sturdy enough to somewhat justify the $299 (on contract) price. We did some brief browsing around, and everything felt satisfactorily snappy. The resistive touchscreen had some expected give, but by and large screen presses did exactly what we wanted 'em to in our limited testing. We're aiming to give this bad boy a serious critiquing over the next few days, but for now, feel free to peruse the absurdly detailed gallery below.

Filed under: Cellphones

Garmin-Asus nuvifone G60 unboxing and hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Can you believe it? No, seriously -- can you believe it? Nearly two full years after its surprise introduction to the world, the nüvifone G60 is finally coming to US shores. In an official press release outed today, the Garmin nüvifone G60 has been blessed with an October 4th launch date on AT&T. Oddly enough, nary a mention of "ASUS" or "Garmin-Asus" is found, but regardless of semantics, you can bet that it'll be looking for buyers this Sunday. The internal GPS chip and 3 megapixel, auto-focusing camera will enable users to geotag photos and emails and navigate using the same heralded user interface that folks rely on today with the company's standalone PNDs. You've already pounded the specifications into your head by now, but the last figures you'll need to know are these: it'll run $299 on a two-year agreement after a $100 mail-in rebate, and if you're hoping to access Premium Connected Services -- which includes traffic updates, white pages, weather, movie, local events and fuel price content -- you'll be forking out $5.99 per month after the 30-day trial expires. So, after all of this, who's in?

Filed under: Cellphones

Garmin nuvifone G60 officially coming to AT&T: October 4th for $299 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments