November 8th, 2008
TeleNav is riding Shotgun with their new personal navigation device
Sometimes the lid gets blown off news about devices and software earlier than planned and it seems that today the TeleNav website developers may have been a little trigger happy as they posted the details on the upcoming TeleNav Shotgun personal navigation device. There is one back in Seattle for me to evaluate, but I also had a chance to spend a few minutes with the one that James has with him and am quite impressed. I have been using and loving the TeleNav Navigator software on the HTC Advantage and this device gives you just about the same experience on a dedicated device. It is interesting that TeleNav is jumping into this just after Dash announced they are backing out of the PND market.
When I first heard the name of the device, I asked my contact where that came from since people outside of the rural areas where I grew up may not like a device with the same name as a gun. I was told it was because the device “rides shotgun”. I then started laughing since we had some pretty strict rules and teenage boyhood battles over riding shotgun when I was in high school and the memories came flooding back when I thought of this wonderful time of my life. It then made perfect sense to me and I now actually really like the name.
The TeleNav software is included on quite a large number of mobile phones, including my new BlackBerry Bold, and is often rebranded by the carriers and charged through your carrier plan for the monthly service fee. The TeleNav Shotgun takes that experience to a dedicated device in a very nice form factor. The device has a generous 4.3 inch touch screen display and is in a black casing with that great rubberized soft touch feel to it. Unlike the Dash, the Shotgun is actually small enough to be carried around for walking navigation or thrown easily in your bag or purse for safe keeping when you are not using it in your car. I’ll provide more details on the hardware after I pick up my evaluation unit next week.
Features of the TeleNav Shotgun include live traffic updates (it check traffic every 5 minutes), automatic rerouting, ETA updates dynamically, ability to send destinations to the device from the web (I LOVED this feature on the Dash), GPRS connectivity for wireless data updates (weather, searching via the internet, and quarterly map updates). I don’t think there is WiFi (map updates) or Bluetooth (for speakerphone and phone contact sharing), but will find out soon enough. The device is based on Windows CE 5.x like many other dedicated GPS devices.
The TeleNav Shotgun will be available starting on Monday for US$299.99 that includes three free months of service. After that you can choose from one of three service plans:
- 2 Year Plan: $239 (equivalent to $9.96 per month)
- 1 Year Plan: $129 (equivalent to $10.75 per month)
- Month to Month: $11.99 per month
You can also choose not to purchase a service plan after the three months is over and you will still have a GPS device with onboad maps, preloaded business listings (currently 11 million), and more. You will not have the real-time traffic, ability to send destinations wirelessly to the device, and other connected features like weather.
Also, if you already have the TeleNav service on your mobile phone, that account and subscription is unfortunately not transferable to this dedicated PND so you should probably choose one or the other. I’ll have to check out the Shotgun myself for a while, but the Advantage may continue to work just fine for me. If not, the Shotgun may just be the device for me.
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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