Garmin-Asus nüvifone M20

Discontinued
13th February 2009

The Garmin-Asus nüvifone M20 is billed as "the first Garmin-Asus nüvifone powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional." That's a strange claim from a brand that have never actually managed to produce a phone to date.

Unlike the massively overdue G60, the M20 appears to be a straightforward ASUStek Windows smartphone with Garmin Mobile installed on it. Innovative? Not really, but at least the M20 might make it to market.. we doubt that the G60 ever will.

Although Garmin-Asus give a vague promise about announcing the pricing and availability of the M20 sometime before the summer, we are hard pressed to understand why they can't bring the M20 to market straight away. This is a Windows Mobile smartphone with a 2.8" 640 x 480 pixel touch-sensitive display, dual-band 3G support, WiFi, a 3 megapixel camera and 4GB or 8GB of internal memory. There are plenty of other phones that offer something similar.

Probably the only really notable component of the M20 is the Garmin navigation software. Garmin are pretty good at this sort of thing, but there's absolutely no reason why you need the M20 to use Garmin's software. Most Windows mobile phones support Garmin Mobile XT, plus some Nokia and BlackBerry devices.

To be brutally honest, the Garmin-Asus nüvifone M20 leaves us feeling underwhelmed. Combine this with the badly overdue G60, and we must say that Garmin-Asus have gotten off to a very unimpressive start with their range.

Competition is a good thing, however, and there's always the possibility that Garmin-Asus might come up with something interesting that will actually make it to market. Who knows?