Wireless Industry Analyst

The Nuviphone has stirred my curiosity on one other front - the silicon inside the phone. The question I am itching to know - whose chipset forms the basis for the phone? Who is to the Nuviphone what Infineon is to the iPhone?

This also gives rise to other related questions like-

As an open fan of Qualcomm's engineering leadership, I like to look at the Snapdragon platform as the panacea for all integration woes and perhaps the heart of the Nuviphone. Here is an excerpt from my July 07 integration article -

"Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform has 3G cellular capability along with GPS functionalities. Plans are on to incorporate WLAN and blue-tooth into this platform. The company is already pitching this as the ultimate dream-solution for any dream-phone. The idea is fairly clear, provide to the phone manufacturers, this all-in-all solution at a cost they cannot resist."
The diagram above seems to illustrate everything that QCOM's all-in-all chipset has to offer. What is more, this is a superset of features that the Nuviphone advertises. The QSD8250 platform supports HSDPA, is GPS, WiFi and bluetooth capable. The GPS and bluetooth will come from its Snaptrack and RFMD bluetooth acquisition respectively. I am, however, not sure if the WiFi capabilities will come from Airgo, or if it is using the mobile WLAN players to reduce the time-to-market. Besides, the platform has a 1 GHz ARM-based processor and a 600 MHz DSP processor that will together make the phone a true mean machine. The chipsets are already shipping to customers. HTC seems to be one of its customers.

As far as the Snapdragon matching the Nuviphone's needs, I do not have visibility into the OS requirements for Garmin. The Nuviphone runs on Garmin's proprietary OS. The literature suggests that the Snapdragon is customizable for Windows mobile and Linux. I am guessing that if need be, writing the drivers for a new OS may not be an issue for QCOM.

Well, that is just my wishful thinking for the moment. I want the Nuviphone to be a great phone and cannot think of a better partner than QCOM for the venture.

Garmin announced its Nuviphone last week. The latest smartphone to be tagged as iPhone's direct competition has me thoroughly impressed, perhaps a tad more than the pioneering Apple product itself. The question however is in the execution, the single most important factor that will govern the phone's success.

I have always liked the idea of combining GPS and a mobile phone. You can read my earlier articles back in July last year on integration where I mention that GPS will be a staple in tomorrow's phones. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with mobile GPS, that was a mobile phone and PND simultaneously. It is hence heartening to note that the GPS leader has taken the step forward rather than wait for the handset vendors to eat into its market and kill it.

Apart from GPS and a HSDPA modem (3G data standard), the nuviphone is advertised to have WiFi, bluetooth, video camera, digital camera and mp3 playback facilities. The details of these features are hazy at the moment. It however seems that Garmin has attempted to market its latest offering as a step beyond the iPhone.

While the phone looks GREAT on paper, I must say that it now boils down to execution. The big question is whether it can match the user experience that is the key selling point of Apple’s offerings. The levels of integration being promised are certainly a novelty. But these features can fall flat if the device is difficult to use. Besides, the OS should be capable of handling various applications that can make use of its 3.5 inch screen display and its touch screen. To be fair to Garmin, the intuitive UI of its PND products is proof that the company has the potential to live up to the hype that this announcement has created.

I am also curious to know several other details which the coming days will tell us. Does the phone have a flash drive or the likes? How many songs can we store? What is the resolution of the camera? How well is the OS integrated with the web? How about its WiFi capabilities?

I will certainly watch out for more announcements about the nuviphone and gather more details on existing Garmin’s existing products to have a better idea of what to expect from the phone. For the moment, I am quite ecstatic about Garmin’s move. It bodes well for the company and the mobile industry. If the nuviphone does live up to its billing, it already has one iPhone proponent ready to make a switch!