You might recall reading the last week’s on Garmin-ASUS developing a tracking system for smartphones (Click here to read through that post). We at PhoneArea had expected that they would come out with a cute Android-powered creation during the 2009 Mobile World Congress to be held very soon this month at Barcelona. But now we think this might not happen. Garmin-ASUS has now announced the release of its Windows Mobile-based nuvifone M20 instead. This is the second of its nuvifone series the first being, the G60.

This handheld is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 and comes with a 2.8” VGA touchscreen, quadband EDGE / triband HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps, WiFi and Bluetooth. Needless to say, the nuvifone M20 will have Garmin’s satellite navigation system, plus support for real-time traffic, movies, weather, and other tidbits of information you will appreciate while on the go. You can choose to have internal storage of either 4GB or 8GB.

Additionally, the nuvifone M20 comes with a Garmin service called Ciao!, which is a friend-finder service just like Google’s Latitude. Information about the availability and pricing of this phone is expected to reach us very soon.

Garmin-ASUS nuvifone M20

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The famous GPS firm, Garmin and Asustek Computer, have recently announced that they have joined hands as partners to design and eventually release location-based tracking services for co-branded smartphones. This unique joint venture, named Garmin-Asus, will be introducing a line of nuvifone series phones and will be branded as Nuvifone G60. This product will be launched sometime in the first half of this year. The companies will release more information during the Mobile World Congress.

Garmin-Asus further plan to produce more mobile phones powered by different operating systems, such as Windows Mobile, Linux and Google Android as well. These phones are said to feature several LBS functions such as location-tagged photos and geo-directed social networking too.

Garmin and ASUS to form a partnership to provide tracking systems for smartphones

source AVING

With ASUS’ touch-driven user interface – Glide, the new P565 is the first PDA phone powered by an 800MHz mobile processor – Marvell TavorP. Beside its fast CPU, the P565 is running on Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional so you may work with Microsoft Office Mobile as well as services like Windows Live, MSN, Voice Commander and Push Email.

ASUS has equipped this PDA with a 2.8″ VGA touch-sensitive screen with 480 x 640 pixel resolution which allows you to look at videos/photos which you capture with its 3 megapixel camera or have a video chat with your friends.

The phone works with HSDPA 3.6Mbps data as well as with UMTS 2100 and tri-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz. Other features are 256 MB Flash + 128 MB DDR SDRAM, microSD/SDHC memory slot, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, Wi-Fi and USB v1.1 connectivity.

With 1300 mAh Li-Ion battery it’s able to provide 3 hours with 3G and 4 hours with 2G of talk time, and 250-300 hours with 3G and 200-250 hours with 2G of standby time. Where and for how much it will be available is still not known.

ASUS P565

Taiwanese ASUS has introduced first PDA phone with an innovative touch-responsive user interface, the ASUS P552w. The UI with Glide technology makes this phone more interactive than other handsets. The device runs on Marvell Tavor’s 624MHz CPU and is powered by Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. It has 2.8″ 65K colors TFT QVGA touch screen with 240 x 320 pixels resolution, 256MB Flash and 128MB DDR.

With bar type form factor it provides microSD slot, WLAN 802.11b+g, USB 1.1, and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity. The ASUS P552w also has a 2 megapixel camera with fixed focus and boasts HSDPA 3.6Mbps speeds. In dimensions 102 x 60.5 x 14.5 mm and 105g it’s available in black and white color variants. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has not released its availability and pricing yet.

ASUS P552w