Garmin May Consider

[phandroid]

Please excuse my pun in the title of this report, but Garmin’s not too confident about the future of their mobile phone front in the face of today’s competition. Once upon a time, it was cool to want a Garmin navigation because – well – who wouldn’t want a phone with navigation features built in? [...]

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[OstrichSaK]

Well, so long as they stick to nav I'm happy. Still have nav units running Garmin so as long as I still get updates for those then we're good.

 

[avaloncourt]

I tired of Garmin's practices long ago. The first and last Garmin convergence device I bought was the iQue 3600, a Palm-based GPS. They made everything on it so proprietary that they killed any real ability for developers to want to make anything for it. Developers couldn't even access the GPS data to incorporate into potential applications. Can you imagine doing that today? Of course, it also had an odd screen size which made it even more difficult for Palm developers. Within months even Garmin abandoned it leaving those of us who were dumb enough to buy it with junk.

I also won't buy their GPS units any more. Again, I tire of the release of >10 models at a time with many having only feature differences based in software. True to Garmin's style, they release a few firmware upgrades across a few months and then abandon the series and move on to the next 10 releases.

Garmin burns their own bridges and have given away a lot of market share because of it.

 

[reinbeau]

I tired of Garmin's practices long ago. The first and last Garmin convergence device I bought was the iQue 3600, a Palm-based GPS. They made everything on it so proprietary that they killed any real ability for developers to want to make anything for it. Developers couldn't even access the GPS data to incorporate into potential applications. Can you imagine doing that today? Of course, it also had an odd screen size which made it even more difficult for Palm developers. Within months even Garmin abandoned it leaving those of us who were dumb enough to buy it with junk.

I also won't buy their GPS units any more. Again, I tire of the release of >10 models at a time with many having only feature differences based in software. True to Garmin's style, they release a few firmware upgrades across a few months and then abandon the series and move on to the next 10 releases.

Garmin burns their own bridges and have given away a lot of market share because of it.

I really don't consider the iQue 'junk', as a matter of fact, I'm still using Betty as my primary PDA, she does everything I need her to do. Yes, I carry two devices, even now that my Captivate will be here today, I'll still carry two, because there's so much on that iQue I still use. It is my primary GPS, and all of my contact waypoints are in there. Because of the proprietary nature, however, and the poor interaction with the Palm OS, those waypoints are captive in there, I can't use them anywhere else. It'll take awhile to get things over to the Captivate. I may scrounge Ebay for used iQues just so I never lose those abilities.

They didn't do the Palm OS/GPS integration properly, and when I saw the phone announcement I didn't think that would last, either. They need to stick with GPS and figure out how to make money that way. I still am a fan of stand alone devices, I really don't want a camera in my phone, nor do I want GPS/Camera/Phone/kitchen sink, but I'm in the minority, I realize. I do, however, love technology, so it'll be fun fiddling with my new toy.

 

[avaloncourt]

I really don't consider the iQue 'junk', as a matter of fact, I'm still using Betty as my primary PDA, she does everything I need her to do. Yes, I carry two devices, even now that my Captivate will be here today, I'll still carry two, because there's so much on that iQue I still use. It is my primary GPS, and all of my contact waypoints are in there. Because of the proprietary nature, however, and the poor interaction with the Palm OS, those waypoints are captive in there, I can't use them anywhere else. It'll take awhile to get things over to the Captivate. I may scrounge Ebay for used iQues just so I never lose those abilities.

They didn't do the Palm OS/GPS integration properly, and when I saw the phone announcement I didn't think that would last, either. They need to stick with GPS and figure out how to make money that way. I still am a fan of stand alone devices, I really don't want a camera in my phone, nor do I want GPS/Camera/Phone/kitchen sink, but I'm in the minority, I realize. I do, however, love technology, so it'll be fun fiddling with my new toy.

I saw your post in the article and I couldn't disagree more. You must have used some extraordinarily bad GPS units because the GPS receiver in the iQue is complete trash. It is extremely deaf and has a tough time retaining lock. That was well documented when the reviews rolled out. The way Garmin implemented their map purchasing and updates is also a travesty. There were still defects in the firmware that they saddled owners with then they abandoned it. I still stand beside junk.

Later I bought the Bluetooth GPS receiver they offered and they abandoned that even quicker than the 3600.

 

[reinbeau]

I guess you and I are going to have to agree to disagree. I had absolutely no problem with the iQue GPS, never had a problem 'retaining lock', and was very well versed in all things iQue - I'm a moderator over on the Brighthand iQue forum, was a alpha and beta tester on many projects. I use a car cradle and an external antenna (the internal died long ago). Betty has taken us all over the backwoods of northern Maine, the mountains in Tennessee, and journeyed around Jamaica. It has never failed me. Then again I didn't expect it to be just a GPS (my husband has a 255, I can't stand the thing), I bought it as a PDA with GPS capabilities, and it suited me just fine.

 

[RagingSamster]

Garmin still sets the standard for sports telemetry equipment. You will have to pry my Forerunner 305 from my cold dead hands! The data and tracking that I get from my Garmin is melded into Googlemaps after I upload my workout data. So far, there is no android app that can record a hike/run/whatever while being "offline".
Garmin also has developed the fitness watch to provide more data than current Android apps can provide ( Runkeeper is closing the gap though)

traffic and green river! by sam.stratton at Garmin Connect - Details

vs

samstratton's Activities | RunKeeper

Same workout, but Garmin has the data advantage. The Nike+ system is also hot on the heals of Garmin, but I don't expect that product to be ported to Android any time soon. So Garmin may need to embrace Android and divest itself from stand-alone GPS/Telemetry units. I hope they do, Garmin makes great innovative equipment and I would definately buy a Garmin app.