TMobile Garminfone
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 16 years
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Anyone have one of these yet?
I bit, and bought one last week. Took it on a 500+ mile drive to the Outer Banks over the weekend.
I gotta say, it was pretty cool. The GPS feature uses the latest Garmin lane assistance, which on some roads can be very helpful. It connected up to the MINI's stereo nicely, and allowed me to navigate and stream Pandora at the same time. Nav commands muted the Pandora momentarily. Not sure how new the US map is on the device, so I created a custom map with parts of the US, Canada, Mexico and cities in Europe, over 1800mb... and loaded that up.
As a phone, the Android OS is quick, and pretty neat. Call quality (when there is Tmobile coverage...) is quite good. Battery life is decent, though tomorrow will be the first all-day out and about test. The phone has a pedestrian mode that can route using public transport, though I have not figured that out yet.
I did find some fun Android apps, and can sync MS Exchange directly which was great from a contacts, calendar and work email standpoint.
Next will be a fresh download of speed cameras to see if they work! Will have to post here a bit to get that!
Looking forward to your additional feedback
And thanks for sharing your experience. I'm thinking about getting the same one, possibly. First I need to see it land in France, though.
Ain't nuthin' never just right to do the things you wanna do when you wanna do them, so you best just go ahead and do them anyway ! (Rancid Crabtree, from Pat F McManus fame)
Garminfone in France
Actually, I called Tmobile today and they are sending me an unlock code for the phone. So if you really want one, all you need is someone here in the US willing to buy it for you and the knowledge if how to program the maps. I have European maps working, but the method used to load them is not supported by Garmin. Basically you buy a map unlock code from Garmin using the phone's id and type that into Map Source. Now select the maps you want and sync them to the phone. They end up as gmapsupp.img in the Maps directory. Move this file to the idea directory .System and rename it gmapprom.img. Eject the phone, power down and back up and voilà maps for whatever region of the world you want! I even got blue charts working using this method. Though the blue charts look weird.
Garminfone (Android) Colorado 300 NUVI 550 NUVIFone M20