Garmin Asus A10

Summary

The Garmin Asus A10 is an Android 2.1 powered smartphone that pays special attention to GPS navigation.Pros:

* Excellent GPS Navigation
* Great Call Reception & Quality
* Support for Google Mobile Services
* Support for Android Market

Cons:

* Sluggish Interface
* Average Looks
* Camera is Below Par
* Poor Battery Life

Introduction, Features

Back in May I reviewed the Garmin Asus Nuvifone M10, a smartphone that paid a great amount of attention to its GPS navigation feature, so much so, that it felt like it had ignored other aspects of its smartphone identity including multimedia and UI.

Now, five months later, I have with me the successor to the M10- the A10. This time around, Garmin Asus have dumped the Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional OS and adopted Android 2.1 for the A10. The navigation software has also been updated and the UI sports a fresh new look. Let’s see if all these changes bode well for the navigation device-cum-smartphone.

Features

The Garmin Asus A10 has a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320x480 and color output of 256K. Like mentioned earlier, it runs Android 2.1 OS with a heavily skinned UI available as an alternative. The A10 has less than 1GB of internal memory but the good news is that it supports up to 16GB of microSD cards. Like other smartphones in its price-range, the A10 does well by not leaving out any connectivity features and supports Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth. It uses a microUSB port to connect to the PC and to charge.

Imaging on the A10 is handled by a 5MP autofocus camera with no flash. The Android OS means that it supports Google Mobile Services that includes apps for Gmail and YouTube. If you are looking for more apps, you will find them in the Android Market; all you need is a free Google ID.

Design & Usability, GPS

The Garmin Asus A10 offers you a choice between two homescreens (which are essentially two entirely different UIs) - Breeze and Classic. The former is a slightly skinned version of the basic Android and includes multiple homescreens, a notification bar et.al. Choosing the latter removes all homescreen save one with widgets on the right (that can be rearranged) and three large buttons on the left that let you make calls, use the GPS or view the pre-installed maps.

Okay, so while the Classic view put the strengths and functionality of the A10 right up front and center, I preferred the Breeze view, since it offered more ability to customize. Also, the interface itself is very similar to the basic Android UI and is therefore very simple to use. Unfortunately, the UI is also sluggish and the animations and transitions within menus aren’t smooth. The touch input is laggy and quite unresponsive. The keyboard works fine although double handed typing on the virtual QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode led to its fair share of mistakes.

The A10’s 3.2-inch display could have been so much more but unfortunately Garmin Asus took a wrong when they decided to make it out of glossy plastic. As a result the screen shines too much but at the same time its contents also look dull. Unfortunately, the A10’s overall look doesn’t atone for the embarrassing screen. The A10 has pretty ordinary looks and unlike the Nuvifone M10, there is nothing in the way it looks that would set it apart from other touchscreen phones.

GPS

Like on the M10, the Garmin Asus A10’s GPS feature is par excellence and its GPS receiver was strong enough to even get a satellite lock indoors. The A10 uses Navteq maps and the India maps and voice navigation are free for the A10 users in India. If and when you go abroad, you will need to buy the maps pack for the requisite place if you want to use navigation on the A10.

The navigation is very, very good with accurate
directions whether you are walking or driving. You can search for destination either in the normal manner by typing in the name of the place into a search bar or by browsing through nearby points of interest, saved locations, favorite locations etc. The Points of Interest especially are quite helpful since they cover plenty of options such as hospitals, hotels, restaurants, fuel stations etc.

I can honestly say that the A10 sits right beside the Nuvifone M10 as the devices that provide the best and most exhaustive navigation experience on a phone.
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