Garmin Asus Nuvifone M10 review

The satnav-centric M10 makes a bid as an all-round smartphone

MP3 players have suffered in recent years owing to the ever-increasing flexibility of the mobile phone and, if partnerships like Garmin-Asus are anything to go by, the in-car GPS should be heading the same way.

The Nuvifone M10 is a Windows Mobile smartphone that looks to combine the strengths of Garmin and Asus to produce an all-rounder that tips its cap firmly in the direction of satellite navigation.

Of course, most modern smartphones now offer some kind of navigational aid but, while this is often seen as an addition to the core functionality of a communications device, the M10 seems to have done it the other way around.

The handset is based on Windows Mobile 6.5, which may not prove too popular with those used to the faster, more flexible and more intuitive approach taken by alternatives such as Android and Symbian.

But this isn't something that should put off users who are happy with a less versatile environment that's perfectly capable of handling the core functionality of the phone.

Resistive display
Garmin has opted against capacitive technology for a cheaper, less versatile 3.5in resistive display. This is a bit of a shame considering the benefits of multi-touch in zooming around a map but, with a healthy 480 x 800 resolution, we're not going to get too hung up on it.

The M10's accuracy as a touch-sensitive screen is reasonably good, but lags behind some of the big hitters in this market as it occasionally misinterprets an action or fails to register a command.

This doesn't happen too often, but more dextrous individuals who expect to fly around menus at speed will find it lags a little at times, and buttons or icons placed at the edge of the display can be awkward to hit correctly with a finger.

There's a built-in stylus to help improve accuracy, and for the most part buttons are large enough to compensate for less nimble digits. Aside from the main display there are three soft-keys for accessing the main menu and dialling or hanging up a call. These can be a little unresponsive, though, and are no substitute for raised tactile controls.

In terms of quality and clarity, this is an excellent display that recreates vibrant colours accurately and cleanly, and is capable of an impressive amount of fine detail thanks to the relatively high resolution.

This is particularly evident with the built-in 5-megapixel camera, and the high refresh rate of the screen makes it a joy to snap photos and 800 x 480 30fps video. The shutter response is extremely quick, and photos display in under a second, although, as with most cameras of this ilk, quality is compromised considerably in dimly lit environments partly due to the lack of flash.

The only real qualm we have here is that the screen can actually be a little misleading as to the quality of a picture. On transferring images to a computer we noted that colours weren't as vibrant as they initially appeared, and a bit of work will be needed to enhance these to a desired level of quality.

Garmin Asus Nuvifone M10 review

The satnav-centric M10 makes a bid as an all-round smartphone

Satellite navigation
One area where we were really expecting the M10 to shine was the satellite navigation, and it didn't let us down. To start with you're provided with a typical array of GPS paraphernalia in the box, including a windscreen mount and in-car charger. These are compact and very sturdy, keeping your phone safely housed when mounted.

A time to first fix of under a minute is impressive and hints at a degree of speed and accuracy that continues right through operation. The Navteq maps used by Garmin are extremely clean and clear, voice instructions are very accurate and it pre-empts tricky junctions and intersections in plenty of time, visually and via voice-prompts.

There's a safety camera database, trip computer, and downloadable traffic alerts, and photos can be geo-tagged to locations. There's also a huge array of points of interest to browse through.

A lane assistant helps reduce the chance for errors on motorways, while the current speed limit is displayed and updated with frightening accuracy. Many of the features are tied to other applications, such as the ability to perform local Google searches and initiate and terminate hands-free calls.

Overall, this is a beautifully streamlined and accessible navigational aid that trumps most rivals for speed, accuracy and ease of use, and is easily the biggest highlight of the M10.

Connectivity, extras and battery life
In terms of general operation the smartphone offers a healthy degree of connectivity in addition to the satnav-oriented accessories, with built-in wireless, GPS, a 3.5mm headphone port and Bluetooth 2.0 with AD2P support.

Additional features include access to Facebook, Picasa, YouTube, weather and flight status information, and local fuel prices, and it can of course be synchronised with Microsoft Exchange. In testing these via the 3G connection we found these features fast and easy to use once the appropriate settings had been configured.

Garmin quotes a battery life of 600 hours on standby and eight hours of talk time, which is certainly impressive, although this is reduced considerably if you're expecting satellite navigation, media playback and the digital camera to be in regular use.

In our tests we managed to all but exhaust a full charge in a couple of hours of fairly solid fiddling with these features, but it's fair to expect around four hours use on the road if you're just using it as a GPS device.

Overall, we found the M10 rather difficult not to like and, while it would have benefited from a different operating system and a capacitive display, the rest of the issues will be relatively minor for most.

The superb satellite navigation capabilities are clearly the biggest draw here, so this would have to be high on a list of priorities to justify a purchase, and those who are happy to live with the rather antiquated operating system are likely to forgive many of its faults.