Dynamic Navigation: Blaupunkt TravelPilot 200

Blaupunkt introduced their new navigation device at CeBIT 2008 - the TravelPilot 200. The TravelPilot 200 features a 3.5-inch TFT touchscreen, SD card slot, and includes five different route options: short and quick routes as well as optimal, economical and ecological routes, the latter being an optimum calculation of route and time. It also features integrated Traffic Message Channel (TMC) receiver and antenna, provides visual and acoustic warnings when the legal speed limit is about to be exceeded, and displays current speed, estimated time of arrival remaining driving time, and distance to the destination.

[technikdirekt]

German iPod Killer: TrekStor MP3 Player

While Apple is more successful than any other mp3 player manufacturer worldwide, it's not so in Germany. The top mp3 player company is TrekStor. It sells more mp3 players than Apple does. And now the company is bracing itself to expand into the UK. Not only does it believe it can be a success in the UK, it's aiming to become the Number Three manufacturer (behind Apple and Creative) before the end of the year.

Gil Szmigiel, TrekStor's chief technology officer, states, "In Germany we've been going since 2001. In most markets we're in, in Germany, we're in the top three brands, and in a lot of cases we're number one. For example in the MP3 player market, Apple is the biggest brand in every country in the world. But not so here in Germany. We sell more MP3 players than Apple does here."

"We have over 120 awards for our MP3 players already and that's because we're not trying to force the customer into acting in a specific way - like only buying music from iTunes where you can't put other music on your device. You can use DRM 9 and DRM 10 with our products as well as normal MP3 and WMA files.

"We're not trying to copy Apple in any way, design-wise or anything. If you look at our products you will not find anything that's similar to an Apple product, they're all very distinctive and different. It doesn't make sense to copy somebody because customers will always want to just go and buy the original."

[tech.co.uk]

Check out the comparison chart for four TrekStor players (click to view actual size):

[TrekStor]

Touch It: Technaxx TouchMe PMP

Technaxx announced their new mini-PMP named TouchMe at CeBIT. This pmp features a 2.8-inch 320 x 240 pixel touchscreen, voice recorder, games, and a microSD port. It supports MP3, WMA, WAV, MP1, and MP2 audio; MPEG-4 (AVI) video; JPG, and BMP images; and TXT eBook reader. It comes in orange, blue, light-green, black, pink, red and silver. Maybe the "TouchMe" moniker hearkens back to the iPod touch?

[gmp3]

Mobile Communication: General Mobile GM500 Watch Phone

General Mobile introduced the GM500, its wristwatch phone at CeBIT 2008. The GM500 claims to be among the smallest GSM mobile phones ever created. The GM500 features a 1.5-inch OLED touchscreen, tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz with GPRS, WAP, SMS and MMS, Bluetooth, Internet capabilities, an mp3 player, a video player, and a voice recorder.

It has 128MB of built-in memory and boasts 120 minutes of talk time and about 80 hours of standby time. The GM500 measures 2.29 x 1.74 x 0.65 inches.

[Pocket-lint]

Korean Market Only: Wibrain B1L UMPC

Wibrain introduced the Wibrain B1L, its entry level UMPC, at CeBIT. The B1L features a 4.8-inch 1024 x 600 pixel LCD display, 1GHz CPU, and runs Ubuntu Linux OS although it supports Microsoft Office. The Windows XP operating system is provided as an option.

There are four different models available with different hard disk, CPU, and memory specs.

Check out the video:

[AVING]

Raising the Bar: Navigon 8110

In addition to the 2100/2120 Max, Navigon also announced the 8110 portable navigation device for the European market. It features a 4.8-inch 480 x 272 pixel touchscreen, 3D maps, SD card port, Bluetooth capability, an FM transmitter, and TMC (Traffic Manage Channel) Pro for traffic information. It measures 5.32 × 3.35 × 0.87 inches. Shouldn't this be the 8110 Max since it has a widescreen?

[le Journal du Geek]

Raising the Bar: Navigon 2100 Max and 2120 Max

Navigon announced the Navigon 2100 Max and 2120 Max GPS devices at CeBIT. These portable navigation devices are targeted for the North American market. Included are maps of the U.S. and Canada (2120 Max, only).

Both devices feature a 4.3-inch touchscreen, Bluetooth capability, text-to-speech, Reality View which provides more life-like pictures of major highway exits and interchanges, DirectHelp which provides information on hospitals and other emergency locations, Lane Assistant, Route Planning with multi-destination routing, and speed warnings. The devices measure 4.8 x 3.0 x 0.75 inches.

The big difference between the "Max" versions over the non-"Max" versions is the widescreen display.

[GPS Review via le Journal du Geek]

Mobile Internet Device: Gigabyte M528

I mentioned the Gigabyte M700 UMPC in my previous post. The M528 MID was demoed at CeBIT today. To summarize the M528 features a 4.8-inch 1024 X 600 pixel screen, QWERTY slider keyboard, 800 MHz Intel Silversthorne CPU, Intel Poulsbo graphics, 512MB of RAM, and 4.0GB flash memory. It includes b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and HSDPA wireless technologies. The M528 has optional integrated GPS. It runs Linux.

Checkout UMPC Portal's Gigabyte M528 hands-on:

[UMPC Portal]

More CeBIT 2008: TomTom Go 730 and Go 930

TomTom officially announced at CeBIT 2008 the successors to the Go 720 and Go 920: the Go 730 and the Go 930 (not surprisingly). In addition to providing information on speed limits, TomTom will calculate an itinerary based on the history of average speeds recorded over the last year all thanks to IQ Routes technology. Also of note is the addition of route management. The devices feature a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 pixel touchscreen, a 400MHz processor, 2GB (Go 730)/4GB (Go 930) of internal memory, an SD port, and Bluetooth capability. And they measure 4.65 x 3.27 x 0.95 inches.

[le Journal du Geek]

Sneak Peak CeBIT 2008: Asus R70a UMPC

CeBIT 2008 hasn't started yet but Engadget has pics of the new Asus R70a UMPC. The R70a features a 7-inch display, two USB jacks, memory card slot, kick-stand, and similar controls to the 5-inch R50a. It runs Windows Vista on a 1.6GHz Intel chip and has a 120GB (unconfirmed) disk. Integrated GPS is probably an option.

[Engadget]