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

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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.

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

Finedigital, a korean company has released a new GPS navigation system the finedrive 700. What catches the attention at first sight is it’s the huge 7.0 inch widescreen LCD screen. The finedrive 700 besides GPS navigation has some very nice multimedia features. It has an external DVD input that allows you to watch your favorite DVDs on it’s screen, in addition to that it can reproduce mp3 files. So this new GPS device seems like a complete in car navigation and media station. Here is a list of it’s features and specifications:

Just Plug and Drive, no downloading required
Detailed street-level maps for 48 Contiguous States & Canada pre-loaded
Clear & Accurate Turn-by-Turn Voice and Visual Guidance
Voice/Text-based 2D &3D Map Instructions
Large 7.0 inch Widescreen Color LCD Touch Screen
Millions of Point-of-Interests (POI) included
Media Player (MP3, mpeg, avi) with external DVD input
OS : Microsoft® Windows CE.NET 4.2.
CPU : ARM9-300MHz
Internal Storage : 20 GB
External Memory : SD Card (up to 2GB) 1 slot
GPS :
Built-in Hinge Antenna
Frequency L1, 1575.42 MHz
16 Channels, Sensitivity -159 dBm
Acquisition Rate
Hot start 8 sec., avg (with ephemeris and almanac valid)
Warm start 38 sec., avg (with almanac but not ephemeris)
Cold start 45 sec., avg (neither almanac nor ephemeris)
Reacquisition 0.1 sec., average (interruption recovery time)
Input : Touch Screen
Display : 7.0″ Color Wide TFT LCD / 480X234 / 65K True Color
Sound : 1W x 2 (Stereo, 8 O hm)
External Video Player : Yes
Power : DC12V/1A (Working DC voltage range : 10~16V)
Physical Characteristics: 7.45″ (W) x 1.25″ (D) x 4.75″ (H)

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