Garmin Announces Garminfone with Android as T-Mobile Exclusive

Following up on the unsuccessful Garmin nuvifone, the venerable navigation device manufacturer is trying again with the Garminfone, which will be launched exclusively via T-Mobile.

The Garminfone will include many of the features found on the company’s standalone GPS device lineup including preloaded maps of North America, a database of nearly 6 million points of interest, and voice-guided navigation with text-to-speech for directions.

Additional features include lane guidance, junction view and a new Android app called Garmin Voice Studio which lets users record and share voice directions. The built-in GPS support can also be used to lretrieve gas prices, restaurants, movie times, real-time traffic, and weather.

The garminfone will run Android 1.6 at launch, but T-Mobile has confirmed that it will support over the air updates. The standard Google Experience Android apps in Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube and Android Market are included, but the device will feature Garmin’s own user interface as previously found on the nuvifone.

Other technical specifications include 3G support, capacitive touch display, Bluetooth 2.1 with stereo audio support, Wi-Fi radio, HTML Web browser with pinch-to-zoom support and a 3.0 megapixel camera with autofocus and digital zoom. The device will launch later this Spring with an included dock for dash mounting.