Garmin-Asus have confirmed that their jointly-developed Android mobile will be making its debut by ‘Q1 2010′ – and may even be out earlier.
The Garmin-Asus team-up has kept us guessing over its Android plans. The Garmin-Asus G60 was rumoured to be running a varient of Android, then confirmed as actually running an in-house flavour of the Linux OS. The latest Garmin-Asus anouncement switches the OS specs back to Android.
The chatnav phone will provide Garmin’s brand of turn-by-turn navigation in handy smartphone form. The Garmin-Asus handset has been much delayed – the most recently announced date was June this year – and there has been concern that developing a proprietary Linux OS might have caused development problems. Switching to Android should go some way to speeding things up, as well as opening up a whole world of apps and games.
Garmin-Asus have plans to make greater use of the location awareness built in to the handset, with the ability to geotag any photos taken with the onboard camera. An Asustek spokesperson suggested that the device should be out in Q1 next year, but may even appear earlier. We are not holding our breath, based on past performance.
Q1 2010 | £tbc | Garmin-Asus (via PhoneArena)
