Garmin nuvifone Delayed Until 2009

Oh, Garmin nuvifone! You make it so difficult to buy you. You were supposed to have been in my hands by now, guiding me from point A to point B. Oh, how you tease us!

Garmin originally announced the nuvifone would be available in third quarter 2008. The prototype that was shown looked pretty impressive. It had a touch screen and looked eerily similar to Apple's iPhone. But Garmin has now announced that it won't be available until January of 2009, a full year after announcing it.



Also, the price for the phone is rumored to be $500. That is going to be a hard sell against a $199 iPhone.

If you need reasons to stay true to the nuvifone and wait until January, here are some features found in the nuvifone that are definitely worth waiting for:

The nuvifone will remember where you parked your car automatically. This might not be a big deal for the trip to the local grocery store, but what about when you visit Disney World's massive concrete wetland they call a parking lot? I can see this feature coming in very handy there.

It records video. The iPhone can't. Need I say more?

As soon as you hop inside your car and place your nuvifone into the cradle, it automatically switches to GPS navigation mode. And based on Garmin's Nuvi navigators, this GPS navigation on the nuvifone should be top notch.

Data plans will be $19.99. This is $10 cheaper than the $30 dollar rate for iPhone.

The nuvifone will have a 3 megapixel camera over the iPhone's measly 2 megapixels. In addition to the 3 megapixels, you can take a picture, send it to another nuvifone user, and the phone will give turn by turn directions on how to get to where the photo was taken. Cool? Yes. Practical? Maybe not, but still cool.

The nuvifone will have 2GB of internal memory and a memory card slot.

All of these are pretty admirable features in a smartphone. Now we simply have to wait and see if something hasn't eclipsed the nuvifone by the time it actually comes out. Don't hold your breath.

You can check out the reviews for all the current smartphones here at TopTenREVIEWS. And you can also find reviews of navigational GPS devices.

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