Garmin Launches Three New Navigation Devices in India

Navigation firm Garmin on Thursday launched three new portable navigation devices - Nuvi 55 LM, Nuvi 65 LM and Nuvi 2567 LM - and introduced live traffic information to its devices in India.

Garmin says live traffic information is now available in six metropolitan cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Garmin's mapping partner is Nokia's Here Maps division, which uses probe data from existing users to provide Garmin Nuvi 2567 LM users with live traffic information.

The Nuvi 2567 LM is the high-end device in this series, priced at Rs. 17,990. The Nuvi 55 LM is priced at Rs. 10,990 and the Nuvi 65 LM is priced at Rs. 14,990. All three devices feature free lifetime map updates.

Garmin says it has revamped the user interface for these devices. The new software will be rolled out as an update to existing Garmin devices in the market. The company has also tied up with Zomato, a website with a big database of restaurants and a large community of foodies, and pre-loaded its app in the new GPS devices.

(Also see: The Reinvention of Zomato)

Zomato is available in all three devices but the Nuvi 2567 LM is the only one among the new devices to support Smartphone Link, an app for Android and iOS that lets you make and receive calls directly from the GPS device. This is accomplished by pairing the phone with the GPS device via Bluetooth. The Nuvi 55 LM and the Nuvi 65 LM don't support this feature.

Another interesting feature is called Up-Head. This shows you points of interests such as restaurants, petrol pumps, etc., in a sidebar, along with how far these are. Tapping the icons on this sidebar shows users directions to the point of interest. This feature is available in all three devices.

With the new software, Garmin has introduced a landmark-based navigation feature. Google Maps users will be used to navigation instructions such as, "turn left at Okhla metro station". Users of Garmin's devices will now get the same information.

All three devices come with Garmin's Lane Assist technology that helps you pick the right lanes when at crossroads or junctions. Lane Assist shows a zoomed-in view of junctions and a big arrow marks the lane users are supposed to take.

On the hardware specifications front, the Nuvi 55 LM and the Nuvi 2567 LM have similar 12.7-cm screens with a resolution of 480x272 pixels, while the Nuvi 65 LM has a larger 15.24-cm display and a display resolution of 800x480 pixels. All three devices come with 4GB internal storage, support microSD cards and let you store up to 1,000 favourite locations. Portable navigation devices are not known for their battery life and Garmin's three devices are no exceptions. The 2567 LM has up to 2.5 hours of battery life, while the Nuvi 55 LM and the Nuvi 65 LM last for two hours and one hour respectively.

Earlier this month, Garmin had launched the Viago app for Android and iOS for Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America, and Russia.

Garmin says it sold around 14 million devices from January to December 2013. The company makes various navigation-based devices for a variety of industries such as aviation, automobiles, etc.