The GPS market has been facing tough competitions from GPS-enabled smart phones that boast sophisticated mapping applications and location coverage that’s often good enough for everyday getting around. However, that doesn’t means traditional portable navigation devices are just going to roll over: today, GPS maker TomTom announced its new flagship TomTom Go Live 1000 GPS device, which will be built around a WebKit-based interface, feature the latest capacitive touchscreen technology, and offer “seamless” real time connectivity across 33 European countries for the first time, blurring the lines between a portable navigation device and an Internet-connected device.
“Our customers are relying increasingly on their navigation devices and it is no longer about the destination alone, but also very much about the journey itself”, said TomTom managing director Corinne Vigreux, in a statement. “The Go Live 1000 has been designed to make the journey a relaxed, predictable, safe, and enjoyable experience.”
The Go Live 1000 will be built around a 500 MHz Arm 11 processor and its interface will offer a new look and feel implemented using WebKit browser technology: TomTom says the results are “much improved” and offer a richer graphical environment. The unit will feature a SIM card slot so users can connect the device with the mobile service of their choosing, 4 GB of onboard memory, 128 MB of RAM, and one year of TomTom services, including IQRoutes (which compute travel routes based on historical traffic data) and HD Traffic, which uses anonymized information from mobile phones to plot real-time traffic. (After a year, users will need to pay to keep the services running.) Users will also be able to tap into real-time weather information, road reports, and fuel prices from the unit; in some 16 countries, TomTom will also be able to provide information about traffic cameras and local search capabilities.
TomTom hasn’t revealed any pricing information, or been too specific about when it plans to let the Go Live 1000 loose on the public, saying only that the unit will be available in the “summer.”
