Coming to Magellan, Mio or Navman?
Mitac, parent company to Magellan, Mio and Navman, has gotten an Android-based GPS-PAD through the FCC. According to the manual, the “series include several products with different physical dimensions.”
The devices appear to be Android tablets that come with a car mount and charger. It looks like some models will offer cellular connectivity in addition to WiFi, which I suspect will be found on the entire series.
The GPS-PAD comes with just about everything you would expect on an Android device, such as Gmail, notifications, widgets, etc.
The Mitac GPS-PAD lock screen
A note of concern: When it comes to installing apps the manual directs you to “download the programs you want from web sites and store them into your storage card or local memory,” and then run an APK Manager — although in another place it does reference the “Android market.”
One nice thing — there is a folder management system built into the device; no need to download Astro file manager.
Is there a market?
Mitac has a history of showcasing products that never see the light of day, and we have no idea which brand(s) they would try to market this under (Magellan, Mio or Navman). But I can see a market for a small tablet that is optimized for navigation use, coming pre-packaged with a mount and charger. IMHO, it makes more sense than Magellan’s SmartGPS. Of course you could just buy a mount and charger for a Nexus 7.
What do you think? Is there a market for a device like this?
About Rich Owings
Running Gingerbread? No.
Good point! The version slipped by me.
Might be a good idea, but not sure if Mitac/Magellan can pull it off. It would have to offer something more than a regular tablet with a few apps. Now if Garmin offered something like this, I would be interested – just put the Monterra software on a tablet for example. 🙂
Garmin already has Android based gps, running on Android 4.0.
http://www.garmin.com.sg/m/buzz/sg/minisite/nuvi3592lm/
I’m using this, quite fast. Hopefully in the near Garmin would be able to intergrate traffic data from Google or Waze
Nice! Thanks for the tip; I’ve got a post going up on it shortly.
I’d be surprised to see them have access to Google traffic data. Question — can you run Google Maps on it and navigate using it?
Yes I can. Use google maps, use turn-by-turn navigation. I can even use Waze. Full access to Google Play. I tether data using WiFi. Yet I still prefer Garmin’s navigation.