Routeplanners: SatNav & GPS News

HP just announced the rx5915 travel companion. Other than the GPS SiRF star III and 2GB of flash memory, all the specs are pretty standard. Other specs include WiFi, 400 MHz Samsung processor, 3.5-inch QVGA touch screen, 64MB RAM, Bluetooth 2.0, SDIO slot, standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and 9-way direction pad.
European customers have a choice of two models  : the rx5700 with eight regional map configurations or rx5900 with maps of Western Europe.Unfortunately, the new Travel Companion series (rx5000) does not have phone functionality included. But this series of PDAs does feature an integrated GPS antenna, SiRF Star II GPS receiver, inbuilt GPS navigation software and carries pre-installed Tom Tom Navigator 6.0 maps in the flash memory, thus requiring no SD cards or Internet activation.

The Tom Tom Navigator can provide the usual voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation instructions. HP says the GPS application is easy to launch via the “Quick Launch” buttons and 3.5-inch antiglare touch screen.

Other travel tools include real-time travel information with WorldMate Standard Edition, world clocks, a packing list organiser, weather forecasts worldwide and a currency conversion application with an online exchange rate service.

The rx5000 series is powered by a Samsung 400 MHz processor and built on Microsoft Windows Mobile! 5.0, so Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Media Player 10 Mobile and Open Windows Mobile platform is all available to via your PDA.

The Travel Companion series supports up to 2GB flash ROM memory, allowing you to store and play music, photos, videos and games. The series also supports SD or MMC memory cards.