Automotive GPS at GPS Gazette

GPSInformation has reviewed the Magellan Roadmate 800 and report:

Overall this is a good autorouting product and provides an easy to use navigation screen with good attention to user interface features. The guidance was good but added extra messages that could get you in trouble. I found the autorouter was fast and it did a pretty good job most of the time.

The GPS was very sensitive and locked quickly. The included mp3 player was disappointing in that it could not be used while navigating.

Via GPSInformation

Technorati Tags: Magellan, Roadmate 800, GPS, Review

MP3Car has released Streetdeck, a complete navigation and entertainment system for the digital car. The complete StreetDeck system consists of two parts the hardware and the software. The hardware includes a car computer with some really nice specs.
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Medion is planing the launch of a new GPS device, the GoPal PNA 350. The PNA 350 will be the successor of last year’s 220T. The unit, will be powered by a Samsung 266MHz processor and will feature a 256MB memory card, an integrated GPS receiver, a 65k colour TFT touch screen and two high definition speakers. Navteq is the company supplying the map software for the PNA 350, and the maps of UK and Ireland maps will be preloaded to the device.

The GoPAL PNA 350 offers a free lifetime subscription to Traffic Message Channel (TMC), which uses FM to provide you with minute-by-minute information about traffic problems.
The unit will be available from March with a price of just under £300.

Via TechDigest

Technorati Tags: gps, receiver, auto, medion, gopal, 350, pna

The Magellan Roadmate 800 is a portable auto GPS receiver with multimedia capabilities, including an MP3 / WMA music player and a photo viewer. The flagship of Magellan’s Roadmate line was reviewed by Personal Computer World. The editors of PCW report

The Roadmate 800 looks very similar to Magellan’s previous systems – a chunky grey slab with a large (3.5in) colour touch-screen on the left and a series of buttons arranged in a circle on the right.

The difference with this particular Roadmate is that it has its own hard drive. We’ve seen hard disk-based GPS devices before, but this piece of kit has a whole 20GB – 5GB of which is available to store pictures or music.

Read the whole review here

Technorati Tags: gps, magellan, roadmate, 800, review

Dual Electronics has announced two new GPS devices earlier last month at the CES, the XNAV3550 and the XNAV4300.
The XNAV3550 will have a 3.5″ TFT, LCD touch screen and will be preloaded with a seamless map of the United States with almost 2.000.000 POI. This new device will be easily upgradeable with additional maps and information through an included 1 GB SD memory card that can also be used to store media files, such as mp3.

The XNAV4300 GPS will have a larger touch screen (4,3 inches). Like it’s little brother the XNAV3550, it will be preloaded with a seamless map of the United States, plus search and guidance functions. In addition to its comprehensive search and viewing options, and turn-by-turn guidance with voice and visual indicators, the unit also features a built-in speaker and MP3 playback capability.

Both GPS devices are expected to sta shipping in the second quarter of 2006

Technorati Tags: GPS, duel, xnav4300, xnav3550

Volkswagen, Google, and nVidia, are working on an in-car navigation system that is 3-dimensional and more real looking than anything that’s available today. This system will display the route in a photorealistic way using images from Google Earth. Something that at least sound very interesting and a great improvement over the current available systems. According to reports this new technology was presented at CES but for a strange reason it went totally unnoticed. Imagine being able to see real photos of the POI (like restaurants, gas stations etc) in the nearby area.

This is going to be a real breakthrough in navigation and GPS systems if it delivers what is promised.

Driver and Passenger will be able to instinctively recognize where they are in relation to the surrounding topography, especially in urban areas that are depicted with depth and accurate size relationships between buildings and roads.

Via Geekzone

Technorati Tags: GPS, navigation, volkswagen, google

XRoad GPS is one of the first, if not the first GPS device that can help you find your way around the world. It is manufactured by a Korean company called Carpoint and it comes preloaded with maps of North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. XRoad runs on Windows CE.Net 4.2 and is powered by a 300MHz CPU. It has a 3.5 inch TFT display with a resolution of 320×240 and a 12 channel GPS receiver.

Garmin has announced that in cooperation with Buel, they have released Buel Quest, a portable navigation system for motorcycles. The unit features automatic routing and turn-by-turn voice-prompted directions to addresses or points of interest like lodging, restaurants, and Buell dealers and service centers. Buel Quest has 115 MB of memory for loading maps while some of its other features include.

Rugged, waterproof case
Flip up antenna
256 Color Display
WAAS-enabled, 12 parallel channel receiver
10 hours battery life
USB interface
Size: 4.5” W x 2.2” H x 0.9” D (11.4 x 5.6 x 2.3 cm)
Weight: 5.5 oz (171 g)

About a week ago JVC announced that it’s entering the GPS market with a compact, portable system that combines GPS navigation with audio/video playback and data storage. This new GPS device is called KV-PX9. The KV-PX9 besides a navigation system is also a multimedia player, offering both audio and video playback features. Some of it’s main features are:

20GB hard disk drive
3.5-inch TFT screen
2d and 3D map views
13GB of navigation maps
13 million points of interest
Voice guidance system
Compatible with WMA, MP3, WMV, ASF, AVI and JPEG files
Touch-screen controls
3.6 x 3.4 x 1.8 inches (W x H x D)

KV-PX9 is expected to hit the market in March with a price of 800$

About a week ago Alpine introduced a new portable GPS receiver the Alpine Blackbird PMD-B100. The Blackbird PMD-B100 will be running on the Microsoft Windows CE platform.

Blackbird includes comprehensive NAVTEQ”™ map coverage for the United States and Canada with full turn-by-turn voice instructions to virtually any address. As a portable device, the unit can be moved easily from car-to-car, yet it also can connect to a wired docking station (PMD-DOK1), available March 2006, allowing it to be fully controlled through one of Alpine’s touch screen based AV head units. Blackbird’s mapping, driving instructions and traffic alerts can then be viewed on the in-dash AV head unit, letting Blackbird serve as the main navigation “brain” in a complete audio/video/navigation (AVN) system. All controls and functions then can be managed from the larger touch-screen in-dash monitor or with an optional remote control.

For more information you can visit Blackbird’s site