Garmin-ASUS nuvifone A50 announced with Android

Garmin-ASUS A50

Today Garmin-ASUS unveiled its first Android powered smartphone, the A50. The A50 includes Garmin’s own navigation system, which offers voice guided turn-by-turn navigation for both drivers and pedestrians and ships with a car mount in the box.

The company claims that location based features are tied into most every aspect of the A50, including email, text messaging, and photos. I used the original nuvifone G60 quite extensively, and it provided great location based service tie-ins, so I have high hopes for the A50.

In terms of core specs, the Garmin-ASUS A50 sports a large 3.5-inch half-VGA (320 x 480 pixel) capacitive touchscreen display, 4GB of built-in storage with a microSD card slot for additional capacity, and a 3 megapixel autofocus camera (with geo-tagging, of course). The phone’s browser supports multi-touch zooming, and Garmin-ASUS says that it can automatically identify location information found in web pages for quick navigation.

In terms of software, the A50 supports Microsoft Exchange for email, contacts, and calendar synchronization. Google Search, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube are also included, and additional apps can be downloaded from the Android Market. Garmin-ASUS’ own software provides location-tied services like weather, traffic, fuel prices, and flight statuses.

The A50 is set to go on sale in Europe during the first half of 2010. No word yet on what version of Android is running or information on its CPU and dimensions. I’ll try to get that information from Garmin-ASUS soon.