The module relays this information to your GPS unit via Bluetooth where you will be able to view a set of customizable gauges that provide details on things like fuel economy, RPMs, throttle position, intake manifold pressure, coolant temperature, intake air temperature, and emissions.

Awesome? Yeah, sure. Will it save Garmin from destruction at the hands of a possible Google navigation juggernaut? No, probably not. [Cnet via NaviGadget via Ubergizmo via DVICE]

TomTom owns Tele Atlas, who drives the roads of the world in order to make maps, and until recently was a major map provider for Google. Nokia owns the only major competitor, Navteq, who has also provided maps for Google. Look at Google Maps now, though, and you'll see that the entire US bears just one single copyright: Google's.

Street View wasn't just a neat way to get imagery to accompany the data already found in Google Maps. As it happens, it was a way to drive the same roads that were already in Google Maps, tracing them with Google's own road teams, and—through efficiency and brute force—do away with those costly map licenses. Google has mapped the US, and will surely map the rest of the world soon enough.

This is just a timely example of Google's monstrous growth, and the destruction it causes. Any business that trades in data or packages it for public consumption may one day face the same issues. It's not just whether or not to compete with the behemoth, but even whether or not to go into business with it. In either case, there is a chance of being destroyed.

Garmin might have a long-standing relationship with Navteq, but they don't own any maps. How can they compete with a free Google app when they still have to pay? (Worse, Garmin is still stuck in the hardware business, where profits are extra thin.) TomTom owns the maps, but charges $100 for their own app because they also make money licensing maps to car makers, competing GPS makers and web services—like Google. Before, Google was a fat revenue source for TomTom; now Google is a sprightly competitor.

If a unique supply of data was the only thing keeping TomTom and others on the Google chuck wagon, who will be next to fall off?

I was always afraid of spiders growing up, not because of the eight legs or the umpteen eyes, but because of the way they kill their prey. They get them in a nice convenient position, then they use their venom to hollow out their victim's insides, until they're just dead-eyed shells. To be killed in such a manner is my worst nightmare; perhaps I should ask TomTom how it feels.

I am a fan of Google products, and a daily user of them. This is not an attack of Google's business practices, but an explanation of the sort of destructive innovation that has made them so huge so fast. (It's also a warning to consider carefully any entities that gets this strong, especially if you plan on going into business with one.) Though predecessors like Microsoft experienced similar explosive growth, and grew a similar sudden global dependence, we've never seen the likes of Google. The GPS business isn't the only one that will be consumed by its mighty maw before it's had its run.

We've already seen the devaluation of the office apps that make Microsoft rich; we've already seen how Google's experiences with Apple and others helped it create telecommunications platforms (both mobile with Android and completely virtual with Google Voice) that threaten its former partners' existence; we've already seen how Google converts photos, videos, news wire stories and other former commodities into freebies by smashing the false notion of scarcity that "service" providers had literally banked on.

So who is next? What other hallowed brands will go the way of Garmin and TomTom? Corbis and Getty? Reuters and AP? Warner and Disney?

This is a tale already told, bound to be told again, but the fundamentals are worth studying—even if we use Google Docs spreadsheets to do it. I have never spoken with a spider, but I am certain they're not evil, despite what fantasy lore tells us. They're just doing what comes naturally, and doing a hell of a job.

To recap the only review we've ever written that didn't even have a "Good" section, the Nuvifone was a failure in about every way that the once-hot handset could've been: It's crashy, it's got a clunky resistive screen, the browser is really, really tough to use, and camera sometimes works, there's a $5/month charge for basic services like weather, traffic and local events, the battery life is horrendous, and the OS acts like a navigation unit firmware with tumorous telecommunications outgrowth. And oh god, that price: $300 with an AT&T contract, which is about how much it'd cost you to buy one iPhone 3G with TomTom and Navigon apps.

So yeah, a price drop was all but inevitable, but it's heartening to see it happen this soon, even if not by Garmin's hand. Next stop: 0. [Amazon via Engadget]

• The 160GB Archos 5 tablet is leaving Amazon's warehouses now, but you'll have to wait if you want to pick up other capacities. The guys at T3 posted a review that out own Joanna Stern summarized. T3 called the Archos "pocketable" and "well-built," but the lack of a real app marketplace is a bummer. If that doesn't bother you, go ahead and grab one now for $390. [I4U]

• Garmin's nuvi 1690 is shipping, and comes bundled with 2 years of nuLink service. That gets you access to traffic, weather, and other internet connected goodies through AT&T's network. After the two years are up, though, you'll have to start paying $5 per month for the service. Keep that in mind as you stare down the 1690's steep $500 asking price. [GPS Track Log via Ubergizmo]

• A quick note to Best Buy Rewards Zone members: you can grab an HTC Hero on Sprint two days before the wide launch. (Thanks Charles!)

The Nuvifone G60 GPS phone is out this week for $300, an absurdly high price for even a smartphone in this age. But the Nuvifone is not a smartphone, not even a clever one.

What's Bad

• The resistive touchscreen reminds me of phones circa 2006, bad for everything but big-button tapping.

• There's no homescreen button, to quickly take you out of a mire of menus.

• It's crashy—screens froze twice while I was writing this, forcing a full-on hard restart.

• Sometimes the accelerometer just stops working completely.

• The camera is terrible—if the hardware button required for the shutter even works—and there's no video of any kind.

• The web browser is all but useless, because it relies heavily on zooming in and out, and the touchscreen easily confuses swiping and tapping.

• The interface looks cool at first, but there are strange design choices throughout. Want an example? The QWERTY keyboard only appears in horizontal mode—it's ABCDE in vertical mode. Also, no "Where To?" button, a la older Nuvi devices.

• You have to pay a $5/month premium charge to check the weather, traffic, local events and other services—all of which can be found on free apps from real smartphone platforms (not just iPhone).

• Even when using email (let alone calendar), there doesn't seem to be any awareness of the rest of the internet: The email wizard lets you enter any address and password, but it doesn't say whether it can actually get mail. This tenacious little phone is still trying to log onto my Hotmail account.

• The battery ran down completely during my first day of testing, after a few phone calls and some modest GPS navigation, and the battery indicator drops fast when it's just on standby. In fairness, you shouldn't use this phone or any other phone without a car charger, if you intend to use it for GPS navigation.

• There is no car charger. It's missing the $7 USB-to-cig-lighter adapter. AT&T probably wanted to sell it separately, but when I asked at my local AT&T store, they didn't even carry it.

• Since it's an AT&T phone, it has to compete with the iPhone and other handsets that are way better. If the Nuvifone were on Verizon, it would at least have a network advantage in certain markets that it could lord over the iPhone herd. But even Apple haters would have a hard time spending an extra $100 on this—with the exact same phone reception.

The Verdict

Unlike most reviews, this verdict isn't for you. If you made it to the end of the headline, you already know what to do. But because I care, I thought I'd say something to the makers:

Garmin: Please get your act together in the phone space. You have two choices: Either make tidy useful navigation apps for the major platforms, or make real phones. There's no such thing as a PND that also makes phone calls (though I think that was the original plan for the G60).

You are great in your field, but even teamed with Asus, you aren't better than the lowliest phone maker, so you have to play catchup: Pick a mobile OS and stick with it. Skip Windows Mobile (for now) and make a serious push into Android. To do that, you'll have to see what everyone else is doing. Don't just set yourself up to lose in the end to an HTC running a TeleNav or TomTom app. You're good at making tough hardware, so why not differentiate with a rugged outdoor Android smartphone?

I urge you to re-consider your premature departure from the mobile app business. Garmin brand equity would sell a lot of iPhone apps, especially if they came with the Nuvi interface most people love more than TomTom's or Navigon's. It may bruise the ego a bit to focus on software instead of hardware, but I just don't see how successful you can be by doing what everyone else is doing, only later and worse. I didn't mean to be this harsh, but I also didn't expect the G60 to be so bad.

In Brief

The home screen is cool for a dumbphone, with three major buttons and a slider of auxiliary options

The navigational experience I have enjoyed on regular Nuvis is here, almost completely intact, but since you can already get that without buying this phone, it's not a major plus

See above—like, every single word of this piece

The first two phones are the HTC Tilt2 and Pure, or Touch Pro2 and Touch Diamond2, respectively. According to sources at BGR, the 2-year subsidized price—with $50 rebate—for the Tilt2 will be $300, while the Pure will arrive at $200. Without a contract, the prices jump to $500 and $350, respectively.

The other leaked price concerns the Garmin-ASUS nüvifone G60, which weighs in at $300 after a $100 rebate. No contract? Bend over; it's $550. Again, no release dates, but a pre-Halloween arrival is likely.

Update: BGR has since updated their pricing info. The Pure looks to be $150 with 2-year contract and $50 mail in rebate. [BGR]

An otherwise typical premium GPS, the 1690 ($500 by this holiday season) comes with two free years of nüLink! service—a wireless data plan with local Google search, traffic, weather, fuel price, movie, flight, event, and telephone listing information plus a bit of Garmin's proprietary Ciao social networking service thrown in. After two years, the service will cost you $5/month.

But while the nüvi 1690 sounds nice enough, I've had trouble getting excited about any current-gen GPS (based upon SiRFStarIII) just knowing that a faster, more energy efficient SiRFStarIV chip is in the works. [Garmin via GPS Tracklog]

Pocket-Lint was at yesterday's launch of the M20 in Taiwan, and says a Garmin-Asus rep revealed "the M20 is destined for AT&T in the U.S.", though no further info was given.

Still in Taiwan, DigiTimes reports that Garmin-Asus is preparing to "ship the Linux-based G60 to AT&T." The report also explains that Garmin will handle the marketing for dual-branded handsets in North America.

Hard to tell from that if AT&T will have exclusivity or not, we'll have to wait and see. [Pocket-Lint and DigiTimes via Engadget]

If and when we will ever see the M20 in the states is open for debate. After all, we are still waiting on the Linux-powered G60. The problem is that many people probably stopped caring about a Garmin GPS phone months ago. [CENS via Engadget]

During a conference call today, a company rep told analysts that the phone, which shipped last month in Taiwan, is in the final stages of testing with US carriers, plural, which is either a mistranscription or a sign that the Nuvifone will see a wide launch, worthy of its, ahem, extended introduction.

A lot has been said about how the Nuvifone's allure has been killed by its lateness, and this is no doubt true—it's just not clear to what extent they've been killed. I'm seeing two sides to this: one the one hand, a lot has happened since we saw Garmin "drop a phone in the GPS," including two new iPhones, the rise of Android, and the Palm Pre. But at the same time, the Nuvifone did look pretty great, and freshness—to users, at least—counts for a lot, so don't give up on our little Neverfone quite yet. [Twice via Phonemag]

The problem, of course, is that monthly fees will most likely be part of the deal—monthly fees that many GPS users are probably not willing to pay. Still, the nuvi 1690 appears to be on its way, for better or worse—although pricing and a release date have yet to be announced. [Electronista]

The Cost: $350 list; $310 online

The Verdict: Portable navigators are great, but they've reached equilibrium: Prices have never been better for the functionality you get, but if the 1350T proves anything, it's that there's nowhere they can go from here.

I hope you recognize that's not a complaint: Forget all those frilly features like voice command and Bluetooth, stuff that you love for a short while but (I fully admit) never use later on in the product's life. It's the basics that count, and the 1350T has basics, plus a slightly tweaked interface that improves on the old Nuvi experience without changing it too noticeably. It's faster than even the higher end Nuvis I've looked at, and has a streamlined main navigation screen that proves that, unlike TomTom, even when you have a winning formula, you have to keep tweaking it. Overall use is still the best in the business.

The "T": It's for "traffic" and it can be helpful if you use it correctly, though that's one of my only gripes: Delays show up in minutes, but there are times when you're sitting still for 5 to 10 minutes and you just see "0:02," and other times you are stuck only momentarily and it shows "0:07" or more. The problem is, it's a moving average. It's not saying you'll be stuck there for that long, necessarily, but that the overall trip arrival time has been changed. It's a bit heady, I think. That or it's simply inaccurate.

The real trouble with traffic is that the best way to deliver streams of information is via a cellular data connection—on demand. (The 1350T has a receiver, but it's not a communicator.) As it happens, nobody is willing to pay for a separate cellular connection to get traffic (and local search) data, because they already have phones that cost a load in monthly fees. Phones aren't yet ready to inherit the GPS world from the portable navigators, but the newest raft of iPhone apps, the latest SiRF GPS chip announcement, and Garmin's own dabblings in the cellular market, prove that it's just a matter of time.

The Ads: The weirdest part is that the 1350T is ad-supported. It's not annoying yet—there are only two ads that I've seen, for Best Western and Walgreens, and they tend to hover in the peripheries. But they could get a lot more frequent and more visible. At the moment, these national chains aren't really targeted to your route, but eventually, this system could suggest stuff at every turn along your route. Is that cool? Maybe, if it comes with like Big Mac coupons and stuff. But most likely not.

The End?: As I mentioned, what the 1350T represents is the logical end of the PND, a highly functional and almost comfortably limited device. We now face an unknown transition, during which time an awful lot of people will buy an awful lot of old-school priced-to-move navigators. [Garmin]

It was January of 2008 when we first caught wind of Garmin's widening ambitions, and grabbed our first joyful glimpse of the navigation-centric handset, followed by an (also joyful!) hands-on. But that was in February, nearly a year after the announcement. And also, again, that was February, about six months ago. The ASUS-built Nuvifone was uniformly impressive from the start—with a custom-built Linux OS, creative location-aware applications, clean styling—but it'll have a much tougher go of it in the age of app stores, especially against the 3GS, Pre, and Hero, which have pretty impressive GPS integration in their own right.

Sadly all we're learning today is that the G60—to be followed closely by the much less exciting Windows Mobile M20—is only shipping in Taiwan for now, which we can at least take to mean the product is finally ready. US release, decidedly not happening in Q3 of last year, is still unknown, as is the price. [Garmin]

HTC and Garmin are both the title sponsors of two American based squads, but any hope of the two teams working together evaporated last Saturday. HTC's George Hincapie, notable for being Lance Armstrong's lieutenant during each of his seven Tour crowns, was able to join a 13-man breakaway and cross the finish line with the race lead—barring any odd developments in the chasing pack he would end the day atop the podium in yellow. Unfortunately for George, not only were the developments strange, but they were also dirty and unsportsmanlike. With nothing to gain, Garmin-Slipstream charged to the front and promptly set a quick pace for the pack; when the main field of riders crossed the line, Hincapie had lost out on the yellow jersey by a mere five seconds.

We can only guess what Garmin-Slipstream's motivations were, but the general consensus is that the team's leaders—owner Doug Ellis and team director Jonathan Vaughters (not the riders)—simply didn't want a fellow American to have the opportunity to wear yellow. The end result was that one of the nicest and most hard working guys in all of cycling was robbed. This is unfortunate for Garmin, they can't really be held responsible for the actions of a cycling team they sponsor—but there are ramifications to putting a company badge on something, cycling fans will think twice before buying a Garmin product. For all we know, it might have been those jerks from Chipotle (one of Garmin-Slipstream's main sponsors); if they can't make a decent burrito for under a thousand calories, how are they going to manage a cycling team?

Quotes from Lance and former USPS/Discovery and current Team Astana Director Johan Bruyneel:

Armstrong: "It's a shame for George. He deserved it… I'm really upset about the confusion, but more importantly, I'm upset for George."

Bruyneel: "Obviously it was clear [Garmin-Chipotle] didn't want to see him in the jersey. If you start to race like that, to go against the success of other people, ultimately it comes back, and I think that is what is going to happen… It's a battle of not wanting somebody else to be in the spotlight. I didn't like that. I didn't like what I saw. I know George has a lot of friends on Garmin. I don't know if they wanted to do what they did." [Velo News and ESPN]

The first round of fixes, which are available in Garmin's WebUpdater app, will remedy signal acquisition, freezing and update prompt problems for of the Nuvi 7x5 series of navigators. Updates for the similarly afflicted 800 series, nüvi 8x5, Zumo 660, GPSMAP 620 and GPSMAP 640 hardware will be coming in "the near future," which, given how short the timeframe is on this issue so far, probably means no more than a few days.

Mercifully, for the unlucky folks whose nüvi 7x5 have been bricked by the prior update, Garmin is urging users to file for an RMA, and will fix or replace the devices under warranty. [Garmin]

Really! A partial feature list: it's got an automatic triathlon mode, so you can switch from one sport to another with a single button press; synchronization with ANT cycling power meters; support for heart-rate straps and Garmin running and cycling cadence meters; calorie, speed, distance and elevation metering; vibrating feedback for anything from distance benchmarks to time intervals to heart rate targets; customizable homescreens; charging via USB or AC. Crucially, according to reviewer Matt Honan, this isn't just well-intentioned feature-loading—all these features actually work.

It's still subject to the typical shortfalls of GPS wrist trainers, namely—though to a lesser degree than most similar products—battery life, which maxes out at about 20 hours. In practice that's more than most people will ever need, but after plunking down $350 for what looks like a wristwatch, it'd be nice if you at least had the option to disable all the frill and use it like one. [Wired]

This past week I drove around with the new $400 TomTom Go 740 LIVE, both around town and on a road trip, and I was shocked to see that the problems I used to bitch about years ago still persist. What good are turn-lane guidance, connected searches and live traffic and weather—let alone user-editable community-powered mapping tools—when the basic experience sucks so painfully? TomTom is feature obsessed, but doesn't appear to care at all about actually improving the product. Here are the major gripes—mostly old and persistent, some new and freshly horrible:

• It still takes 5 clicks (and three different screens) to cancel—pardon me, "clear"—an active route. Even with voice command, you have to know the right lingo or you're SOL.

• The main screen is still a mess, mainly too much unnecessary clutter: Satellite signal strength? Minutes till turn and distance till turn and time at turn, plus time at destination? Traffic alert icons even when there are no traffic alerts? The road graphics still look horrible, and the refresh isn't always fast enough to tell you where you are.

• With the exception of the recently added highway lane guidance screen—which you only get on multi-lane highways—the actual turning instructions are unclear. There's no bar up top that says the name of the street you should turn on, and you only hear the street names and numbers aloud if you select the single (and relatively incoherent) "computer" voice out of many, many more pleasant voices. Also, when you're cruising on a long stretch of highway, it keeps telling you what exits not to take, even if you're going straight for hundreds of miles. Annoying.

• It doesn't turn on and off with ignition—like all Garmins do—so it's always sitting there on as you're leaving the car, and you have to turn it on manually when you remember to, generally after you've started driving.

• TomTom still just pretends to be US-friendly. The meaningless "international" icons, featureless line-drawing maps and the use of expressions like "motorway" make you quickly realize this is a one-design-fits-all-countries product—and the US is a low priority.

• Voice recognition is unhelpful, because in order to use it, you have to memorize all of the possible commands, and in my experience, the thing has a hard time figuring out what you're trying to say.

• Newfangled screw-in suction mount sucks in the wrong way. It's worse than TomTom's older mounts—which were a rare design win for the company, now apparently gone. Also, as you can see from the photo above, the matte screen is hard to see in bright sunlight, even with the backlight jacked up.

If TomTom isn't willing to address its products' fundamental problems, it deserves to fail in this business. Does that sound heartless? What's heartless is foisting sub-par hardware on unsuspecting moms and pops, who don't have the privilege of testing a bunch of stuff side by side. Because I have a heart, and care about your hard-earned money, it's my duty to tell you—and your mom and dad—to avoid TomTom like the freakin' plague. (In case you were wondering, Garmins are still the best—even the cheap ones.)

Explaining the setback:

Smartphones are complicated and bringing one to market that's built totally from the ground up on a custom Linux platform is not an easy task.

This is true, probably, but less than reassuring if you note that what the public has seen of the Nuvifone—from the gobs of press pictures in January of '08 to our hands-on nearly a year later—has shown a handset that remains essentially unchanged, but mysteriously unfinished.

What's happening? Extremely pesky bugs? A behind-the-scenes patent war? Trouble finding carriers? A sinking realization that, in the time they've spent building one handset, a wildly successful new iPhone has come out with an accompanying app store, Android has grown legs, BlackBerry has entered the touchscreen fray and Palm has come nail-bitingly close to releasing a handset that's, ahem, "built totally from the ground up on a custom Linux platform?"

Whatever it is, it's burning right through our—and everyone else's—excitement reserves. [Twice via Navigadget via PMP Today via Engadget]