The option of being able to use your mobile phone for navigation and GPS has become increasingly important for a lot of mobile phone users, especially those in the business sector. Up until now the only way to use an official recognised satellite navigation program is to either purchase a phone that supports this option then purchase the software separately, or by using a device with this pre-installed, such as the HTC TyTN II which uses TomTom Navigator 6.

With the recently announced Garmin Nuvifone, this is about to change. In essence, the Nuvifone is a standard Garmin sat-nav device with mobile phone features bolted on for good measure. Although some have labelled it as an iPhone competitor, this would seem to be very unlikely simply down to the differences in the target audience. This theory seems to be based entirely on the fact that both are touchscreen mobile phones with a large and clear display, but little else.

As there hasn’t been a public unveiling and testing yet, it’s hard to make any kind of judgement regarding the effectiveness of the UI, but if it anywhere near as innovative as the iPhone was the Nuvifone may surprise us and offer a genuine alternative to the Apple behemoth. We do know that it is based upon the already proven interface on Garmin’s existing Nuvi Sat-Nav system, but not if any changes have been made to suit its use in mobile phones.

Official specs are not available at this time, but there are some small details that have been revealed. The Navifone will have a 3.5” touchscreen display; HSDPA access on 3G; digital camera with video (no Mega Pixel count known as of yet) and media player with support for all the latest music file formats such as AAC+, MP3 etc, though this is generally conjecture as opposed to hard acts..

The Garmin Navifone will have 3 different ways in which to use the device, which can all be selected with a single tap on the relevant on-screen option. The options are pretty self-explanatory – Phone; Search & Navigation. The search option in case you’re wondering is for locating your own position when lost, via the built-in Google local search option.

The Sat-Nav capabilities are based on Garmin’s standalone Nuvi series of GPS receivers and are likely to be much better than the efforts seen so far, thanks to Garmins expertise in this field.

As soon as more specific official technical details have been confirmed, we’ll have a better idea if the Garmin Nuvifone will be a realistic competitor to the iPhone or if it will create its own little sector in the mobile phone market.