I dont know why I bought Garmin 205W a couple of days ago. I had to return it to Makro. Thanks they refunded me the whole money. The difference I experienced with Garmin and Nokia E71 is as follows:
- In Nokia the screen is small but it shows name of every street in the screen, whereas in Garmin it doesnot show the name of some of the streets in the screen.
- Very inaccurate map specially for Eastern Cape province. E71 has better maps and shows accurate maps even on gravel.
- Garmin doesnot show when the freeways seperately, whereas E71 does show when and where is freeways.
- Voice guaidance is much more convenient in Noakia to follow than in Garmin.

So you can deicide which one is better.

I would like to agree with you on the convergence aspect and if you could point me in the direction of a cellphone handset, that handles all the functions of all the devices that you listed equally well, I would probably rush out and buy it this afternoon

Unfortunately what we tend to find is that most cellphone handsets perform one or two tasks really well and, although they may have all the other features built-in, the rest of those features offer standard and often even sub-standard performance.

Of course, if the GPS is not something you would use on a regular basis then it’s not a problem. But when you’re a business rep who is on the road and using a GPS for most of the day, a dedicated touch-screen GPS unit would be a lot easier and better to use than fiddling around with your cellphone every 10 minutes or so.

The same applies to the outdoors type who requires their handheld GPS to be rugged and even waterproof for their weekend forays into the bush.

As a last point, the small screen size that you mentioned as a “con” is a big sticking point for a lot of folks.

I would like to reiterate by saying that Cellphone/GPS hybrids are actually useful. Secondly, the maps are not really an issue.

I use a Nokia E71 with built in GPS, it works beautifully for me wherever I have travelled (Middle East, South Africa, East Africa, USA, etc).

I installed Garmin Mobile XT, and can therefore load any Garmin maps on the Nokia E71, making your mention of updated maps on the cellphone irrelevant. It is also possible to install TomTom or other 3rd party software.

In summary therefore, in these days of convergence, It is absolutely pointless to carry a GPS unit, cellphone, PDA, MP3 player, digital camera, video camera, TV and laptop with you, when all these can be achieved by carrying one converged device.

There are cons of course, like scren size, etc but hey, the pros far outweigh the cons.

By looking coldly at the really necessary cell phone functions (and by visiting Vodaworld!) I was able to identify a handset which is R2600 cheaper than the one which the shop assistants initially told me was the cheapest solution. The saving is the price of a small GPS unit.

The cheaper cell phone unit also nominally has GPS but I now accept that any useful benefits from that feature would be a pure bonus.

The GPS from the expensive one would cost R1000 pa.