Customer Reviews

Garmin nüvifone G60 GPS Phone (AT&T)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After owning the Nuvifone for a week and a half and spending 4 plus hours a day trying to get things working correctly, I am very disappointed. The two other reviews appear to be written by Garmin employees. (one was deleted)
OK, let's get down to details.

The first thing you will need to buy is a DC adapter for your car or the GPS turns off in 1 minute. The "everything you need in the box" is just a powerless windshield mount. AA&T doesn't carry ANY Nuvi accessories so be prepared to order it from Garmin are find an adapter that works. It is a standard D/C charger plug to a mini USB with a 90 degree bend. Once that is done the GPS part work fine in 3D mode, but has some bugs in 2D mode (the way I always use any GPS). The pink line (your path) disappears , changes color or just doesn't show. This happens ALL the time. The voice instructions work fine and the directions are correct. So you will get to your destination as longs as your don't look at the GPS or rely on the pink path drawn in. In the default 3D mode it works correctly. So let's give it 4 on the GPS part. Hopefully a future update will fix this problem.

Also the GPS portion does have search (like most Garmin GPS's) which will locate businesses, stores, etc close to your location. This generally works good unless the database isn't updated (i think its updated when you buy new maps,...not a free update) . Stores open and close,..so.. the database is sometimes wrong. My first time using it to find a new doctor's address sent me to the wrong part of town. The doctor moved 2 years earlier. However between the built in data base and the real search ,..such as a Google search or AT&T yellow pages search, you will find what you are looking for. I get it a 3.5 rating in this area.

Now the phone part. There is NO one touch dialing, no MOST USED numbers, only your contact list and recently called list. Scrolling down 170 contacts to find the one you need is SLOW. There is a very tiny A-B, C-D, etc list on the very edge, however it is difficult to actual hit these buttons. Most of the time you accidentally hit a contact and then have to quickly hung up and start all over again from "A". You can not go from A to Z backwards (scroll up) but have to scroll down from A-Z in normal alphabetical order. Simplifying A,B,C,D ,.... ok, A,Z,Y,X,W ... no. So if you are calling someone with a name that starts with a T or a W, you have a long scroll. I try to use the recent call list for a favorites. However you must constantly delete normal callers out the list as it becomes VERY large quickly. If you call a number that requires you to enter additional number,...1 for operator,...2 for customer service,..etc, It is hit or miss that you can do that. The phone turns dark after ???? 5-10 seconds??? (seems to very) and the locks. By the time you press the power button and double tap the unlock button, the wait is too long.The answer machine says "I'm sorry lets try that again" or sometimes it just disconnects.So the phone part can be frustrating.

When receiving a call, if you touch the power button it sends the caller to the answerphone and turns off the ring. There is no option just to turn off the ring and allow you to answer the call. Accidentally hitting the oversized power button happens 30% of the time for me. This is also very frustrating! I give the phone rating a 2.5 out of 5.

Internet Function,hummm,.... OK, lets just says it is pretty terrible and very frustrating. You can not view the small cell pages like an Iphone but the full pages. Input is difficult, when scrolling across the page, you instantly jump to a link (not what you wanted). The back button goes back 1 to an infinite amount of pages, and you start over again. There is no forward button when it goes back too many pages (which is almost always the case). When attempting to get to Garmin's site and to the nuvifone accessories page,..I gave up after about 30 minutes of trying. Many objects on webpages do not work in the browser. No radar animations, no videos, no pop-up windows (which sometimes can be a good thing) work at all. The internet part rating is a about a 2 out of 5

The 3G speed is very slow compared to The Iphone. However this may be because the Iphone is using smaller cell pages. The Garmin often seems to be loading for a very long time. I hit the stop button so I can continue navigating.

With this in mind the 30 buck a month data plan is a mostly a waste.

Getting my email worked fine after getting it set up. The default settings did not work for me. I however can not read Microsoft .docx in attachments which it is supposed to be able to do. I have not investigated the problem yet. Since the emails are left on your server, you can download them on your home computer and read the attachment. The emails download to the Garmin are basically copies on the emails on the server. Also the emails can be viewed as a web page so you can view it as it appears on the computer. So,... the email part work good ,..lets say a 4 of 5 rating.

Texting seems to look and work like everyone else's, so that parts good,..P.S. there also 15 buck a month text plan.

The 6 buck a month fee for white pages, temperature and traffic is optional and the traffic may not even your area. One may wonder way should I pay for white pages, traffic and weather when I'm paying for a 30 buck data package. I'll just use the internet and get the info just as quick. Well if you think this will work then reread the internet part of this review above. PS,..the weather is just "your city" temperatures, not radar.

The 3m camera is terrible. The pictures with my 1m Samsung phone blow them away.
Some reviews say there is a video player and recorder. There isn't. It can not play videos or record them. No youtube. The camera function also rates a 1.

Audio is the next problem. The volume button is accidentally activated anytime you touch the phone. Most of the time I don't hear it ring because the volume is too low. There is no independent ring volume. It is all linked to the master volume switch which gets accidentally shifted every time you touch the phone. The volume on max is low. The audio sounds like a box with the speaker rattling. MP3 play back at a very low volume.

Well that's it. OK phone, texting good, and very good GPS. The rest is garbage and needs some work badly. Remember you need the data plan,text plan (if you want texting) and maybe the optional services plan (traffic, white pages, gas prices etc). That's a lot of extra bucks extra a month. And,..if you need to update you maps,..that you will need to buy the maps from Garmin or other stores at a nice 75 bucks per update. So the GPS portion isn't totally Free.

What's the final verdict?? Well if you want a decent phone, a close to real Garmin GPS, text occasionally, and have very limited internet use, then go for it. If you spend most of you day on facebook, youtube and twitter and like to take pictures and videos, then look for something else.

I edited the review because I have spent another 30 hours of testing and so far have not returned the nuvifone,.at least not yet. Garmin could have made a great Phone-GPS but for some reason settled for a fair one. They need to put the video player-recorder back, fix the camera flare (blurring) and be able to use the small webpages to make this phone a GOOD phone. They need independent volume controls, and options for the on off button.

I made the mistake of buying this product after trashing my iPhone, assuming that a Garmin-built phone would be set up for outdoor applications like boating, kayaking, hiking... and thus the ultimate toy for a person who loves to consolidate their gear into the bare minimum of efficient, multi-use gadgets. But Alas! Garmin has chosen to market this phone to the soccer-mom demographic instead of to it's enthusiastically loyal outdoor contingent. Garmin only made their road-maps available to the nuvifone user... No USGS maps. No trail maps. No water maps. Not for any price. When I found this out, my enthusiasm for this product was totally crushed. To put it mildly, I felt betrayed.

I also am not impressed by the battery life, which seems terribly sub-standard, for a GPS or a phone. It doesn't seem to go more than 24 hours without a re-charge, even with the settings (email, sounds, screen-saver, etc.) dialed way down to save juice... and I'm not much of a talker. I'm hoping a battery upgrade will show up on the market, but unless/until it does I'm stuck with a cheap AA-powered emergency cellphone charger on my keychain to deal with the shortfall.

To be fair (and since I'm stuck with it), there are some points I do like about this phone.
- The removable micro-SD card. This feature makes the phone potentially useful as a zip-drive / mass storage device for transferring files (something totally lacking on the iPhone). I just picked up a 16gb card on Amazon for about $45 (w/shipping), and word is that a 32gb micro-SD will be hitting the market soon.
- The compass, and the basic navi-screen. The compass can be calibrated, something that those living in northern latitudes will appreciate. The classic satellite acquisition screen gives a quick 3-point provenience, and a good idea of the point's accuracy (Try that with an iPhone...cell-tower driven GPS/compass don't work unless there are enough towers in range to TRIANGULATE.).
- The camera. The phone actually looks like a camera, with a real button in a comfortable spot on the side of the case, just about where a camera button should be (NOT on the touch-screen, a feature I positively HATED on the iPhone). It is a full 3mp, can do decent close-in shots (5 inches,+/-), collects light well, and it can attach an instant lat/long to your photo if the GPS is running... a great feature to have when you're moving fast and see a great camping spot, beach, or other feature that you might want to get back to someday.

Hopefully, Garmin will get the message and expand their phone to fit the rest of us. I encourage you to check with the company's website to check out what maps are available for the nuvifone before deciding to go with another phone. This phone does have some great features, but the addition of useful off-road maps would turn it into the useful tool it was really meant to be...

<sigh> One can only hope...

I've been using the nuvifone g60 for almost 4 weeks now and love it. Mostly, the nuvifone is an excellent navigator and when you clip it the the windshield mount, it charges and has a great speakerphone. The thing that differentiates this from other smartphones is that you have REAL built-in maps so the navigator will work anywhere, anytime and simultaneous with phone calls and other applications. I don't ever have to charge the phone at home since I drive about 1 hour per day and it charges in the navigation cradle. The location based navigation functions are really cool and you can geo tag locations and photos. Once something is geotagged it can be shared with others via texting. You pay NOTHING for the navigation since the maps are built in, but there is a $5.99/month charge for the premium subscription service which includes traffic, yellow pages, gas prices, movie information, entertainment, flight status, white pages and other applications. The traffic is actually very accurate and useful if you live in a congested area.

The Garmin is OK. I thought that since the GPS feature was my second biggest interest in a cell phone, I thought getting a Garmin would have its advantages. I have found that it does not. In fact the way the screen illumination feature works is very annoying. The choice is to turn off the auto lock feature and have your battery run down quickly OR keep the auto lock feature on with only a choice of 1, 5, or 10 minutes. When you are on the phone, screen does a time out and you have to press the power button to get it to light up so you can do anything, including hang up. When a incoming call comes in, you have to press the power button first to illuminate the screen and then tap screen twice and have phone automatically answer. You have no screen choices other than answer the call.

Garmin is not worth anywhere near the price of an iPhone.
I'm getting an iPhone.

Just off the top of my head, here's a couple of points about this phone. I've had it for about a year now. In general, I like the hardware and the concept, but there is room for improvement.

- The CPU is too slow. Starting up, and even shutting down, takes unduly long. When playing music, the phone is so slow as to be nearly unusable for anything else. This also makes it difficult to get the timing right for the "tap twice to unlock" feature, which is rather annoying when there is an incoming call.

- I find I need to recharge the battery every night, and sometimes it doesn't even last that long. Mostly this happens when the camera somehow gets activated unintentionally. It also happens after a few hours of playing music through bluetooth. GPS also drains it quickly, though usually this isn't a problem in the car since I have a recharger cable there.

- I live in an area of marginal GSM reception, and I often find that the phone is stuck on a screen asking me which provider I want to choose. I don't think there's a way to configure it to be intelligent about this.

- The bluetooth usually synchronizes nicely. I think when it doesn't is when it is stuck on a screen trying to figure out which GSM provider to hook up with. Unfortunately, this happens to me a lot.

- The GPS software is generally reasonably well done. But it's not as good as the other GPS device that I have, so it takes longer to get a lock; several minutes even under optimal conditions.

- The feature whereby it automatically gets information (e.g., weather) using WLAN in preference to GSM, is really nifty. Sometimes, though, I have to turn the WLAN off, and then back on again, in order to get the connection to the Access Point.

- Lately it seems to be developing some problems. Sometimes after entering the SIM PIN, it hangs. Being as slow as it is, it is hard to know the difference between wedged and normal operation, so it can take a long time just to get it started. Sometimes the touch screen is offset, so when I touch one key, it activates another. This is so bad, I can't even access the leftmost keys. Sometimes rebooting fixes this.

- I like a simple music player, but this one is downright primitive. Above all, it should support more formats, like OGG and FLAC. I'd also like to be able to choose between music and a talking book, continuing where I left off.

- The menus could use a bit of tuning; some functions are hard to find.

Not surprised to see the 1 cent price for this phone (was $139.00 just a month ago); glad I refused shipment after reading the reviews on other sites. Now this was the time I was really dissapointed with Amazon when they do not give you full information about cancelation procedure. To cancel, Amazon takes 4-5 weeks to process while AT&T requires it before 30 days of approval (no matter you received the phone or not). The Amazon deal may seem great but do confirm all details with with the service provider as they both work very very independently.

Exelente helps to travel and to communicate is very useful at the time of finding some city

I've had this phone for almost a year. I should have known better to buy such a new product but what can I say the guy at the phone store made it seem like I was crazy not to get it. I'll admit that it has some nice features but it's nothing that any iphone or android phone can't do better. Garmin doesn't have any additional apps for this phone so it just can't compare with any other smartphone. The GPS is marginal and will often take me way out of the way or for instance tell me to get off of the highway just to get right back on and I live in a big metroplex where one would expect directions to major arenas to be an acceptable request. it would probably be cheaper and more useful to buy a separate gps. The final kicker is that the battery life on this phone decreases by the day. Save yourself some time money and frustration and run from this phone

I bought this phone because I wanted to replace about half the gadgets I had with one. In a way it worked for that. I used to have; a cell phone (Voice+txt), An internet hand held, GPS, and MP3 player (musics+audiobooks). I serched for a phone which wouldnt require a data plan merely for GPS, could use internet, and would suppoert Audiable and MP3 playback. At first look it looked like this Garmin phone would do all those things.I must say I like, and hate this phone.

Over half of all Garmin devices are audiable and MP3 playback, this one is one of the few which is not Audiable supported. The linux based icon driven OS is easy to use but takes some getting used to when switching from a BlackBerry. The onscreen keyboard is alright, nice big buttons for big fingers and caibrates easily.The micro SD slot makes transporting data from phone to computer with out a cable quite easy, as long as you have a linux based computer to read the format from the phone that is. The txting on the phone is far more compatiable and functional than my former black berry. The Wifi is great and picks up networks and allows use of data functions without a data plan if you have an active wifi connection. The MP3 player isnt god greatest gift but is functional for 99.9% of what I ask it to do. Over all as a device I would give it 4.5 stars if not for a few things. Also a plus I like is the standard USB micro jack for chargeing and data transfer.

Major cons:

The 1.5mm head phone jack. I mean what the hell??!!! Nobody else uses a micro head phone jack, even my old black berry had a full 3mm jack. When you puchase the adapter kit from walmart (as you ievitabley must do) also buy a 12volt to USB adapter seeing as there is no car charger. It should be noted that the audio jack is crappy and begins looseing is connectivity due to constantly having to remove the adapter to use the buttons it covers.

The crappy construction of the phone is another issue. The screen is the wrong size and texture for a stick on protector, and since its resistive and not photo or eletro-impluse you cant use a hard screen cover. It scratches easy due incompatiability with screen protectors. The screen has phantom pixiles which leave random dead spots, and last but not least is less sensitve than the screen on my old internet handel. It gets dirty and requires a micro fiber cloth to clean due to the unique texture of the screen. The buttons break, the volume up button contact is broken off and only the down button functions now, so i must first turn the phone down then use the touch screen to turn it back up. The biggest contruction issue however is the battery contacts, they just flat out suck. Joggle the phone, drop it, set it down too hard, or just plain put it in your pocket for awhile and you'll knock the battery loose and the phone shuts off and sometimes wont restart for sevral hours.

The OS isnt bad for functionality, but it is so buggy that my phone will freeze up when loading pretty much anything. If i get a flurry of txt, it freezes. If I surf the net, somtimes is freezes. I try to place a call and one comes in at the same time (not as rare an occurance as you might think); it has a total melt down and freezes. The accelerometer if bumped to hard in the axial position (meaning if you set the phone down hard, or jump up and down in place with it) will bug out and cause the phone to freeze. Miss an OS or software update by a couple of days, and it freezes.

When it freezes you have to open the back and pop out the battery and wait 30 seconds for the RAM to loose power and then put it back in. This forces the phone to reload the OS from the flash memeory. This takes forever, literally your rebooting the entire OS; apps, maps and all. Heaven forbid your battery is low or it comes loose during the hard reboot because it causes an error in the reboot which locks out the phone(it simply wont power up) for approximatly an hour.

Battery life is terriable. I plug it in at home every night(all night) to get a full charge, and by the time im home the next day after work its crying for its charger. Txting is the biggest power hog, with internet a close second. The other uses such as GPS,MP3 player, and voice communication dont seem to draw it down badly.

As I said, I like the phone. I hate the software. The T-mobile version, is supposed to be much more stable, and is of better construction. However the price tag is off the charts (actully more expensive than an Iphone 4 when bought off contract), and lacks many of the features which attracted me to this phone in the first place. Supposedly a new G60 like garmin phone is comming out which will use Android, sofar it is simply called the GarminAsus. This would likely fix all the software problems, as well as allow use with Audiable audiobooks. However they have been saying this for since febuary and I have yet to see this fabled phone. It has its moments, but they are getting more rare as time goes on, Im holding out hope, If your thinking of buying this I would sugest waiting.

I bought this phone assuming that I would get a "smart" phone and a good GPS, turns out I got neither. There are NO apps available asside from the ones loaded on the phone and they are pay extras. ATT doesn't even list this phone on their app store web site, when you contact Garmin they simply say talk to ATT. If you want a smart phone run, don't walk away from this phone. The GPS takes you where IT wants you to go and frequently tells me to turn the wrong direction. When trying to use it in Indiana recently it took me a mile from my destination and said I was there. I really wonder how Garmin got such a good name and really hope they don't use devices like this in smart munitions.

As a phone it functions fairly well although I can be standing still and have it go from 5 green bars to 1 red bar then back to 5 green bars. Go figure... The camera works as long as you have bright lighting, get close to normal room lighting and the exposure time is so long everything is blurry. As an internet device it works with some sites and not with others so spin the wheel and see if you get lucky. Even if you get lucky it is SO SLOW... my friend with an iPhone already is 2 pages ahead of me and we are both on ATT sitting next to each other doing a speed comparison.

The power button get's pushed very easily. Was having lunch with a friend and it was in my pocked and started powering down. He asked to look at it so I handed it to him and he hit the power button and I could no longer see txt messages that were recieved or messages I was tryign to send. ATT store tech had no idea or instructions on how to reload the phone and I had to send it back and got a "referb" replacement.

Long story long is that I would NEVER buy this phone again and wish my contract was up so I could ditch this lousy phone and get something with some capability.

As much as I dislike Apple I should have gotten a iPhone... sigh...