Garmin Mobile XT: universal navigation system

Garmin announced Garmin Mobile XT, interesting all-in-one navigation solution that turns smartphones with internal/external GPS receivers into Garmin navigators. Garmin Mobile XT offers preloaded maps for either North America or 30 European countries, including access to dynamic content such as real-time traffic alerts and fuel prices. The new application is free of any monthly fees or subscriptions and is sold at a rather reasonable price.

Garmin Mobile XT is preloaded on a microSD card (with miniSD and standard SD card converter) which means you can put the card into any smartphone and enjoy the Garmin intuitive navigation which launches automatically. The software is compatible with Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm, and Symbian S60 v3 devices and sports the regular functions such as turn-by-turn navigation and voice assitance, as well as advanced features such as travel guides, topo maps, custom points of interest, route planning with saved routes, custom avoidances and visible trip logs. Garmin Mobile XT users also have the benefit of routing to the location of a contact in their phone's address book or to a calendar appointment (on supported platforms). The maps that the Garmin Mobile XT uses for navigation are made by NAVTEQ, which was recently announced as a will-be acquisition of Nokia.

The Garmin Mobile XT also includes the so-called PeerPoints, a feature enabling users to send their GPS position to any other Garmin-enabled handset as well as view and navigate to the location of other Garmin Mobile XT users. PeerPoints is a convenient way to keep track of friends and family and easily navigate to them. Other benefit is the included free access to Garmin Online, a useful service which gives up-to-date information such as real-time traffic, fuel prices, hotel prices and weather forecasts.

Garmin Mobile XT is available now for a suggested retail price of US 99 for USA and GBP 59.99 for UK and Ireland.