Targeting at business travelers, as it’s review, TeleNav has come up with a new GPS known as the Telenav Shotgun available at its website. The Shotgun brags of internet connected GPS capabilities to an increasing list of GPS manufacturers that have a unit in the market or have made announcement of the development of one.
The latest PND, being compatible with the TeleNav Connected Service, also boasts of the capabilities of examining traffic conditions along drivers’ routes and proactively tries to find incidents or congestion. The Shotgun is also capable of offering info on traffic speed or a flow of main highways, and an expected time of coming (ETA) depending on traffic, distance and speeds.
Additionally, the Shotgun comes included with 11 mln (POIs), full-color 3D maps, a 4.3-inch TFT LCD touch screen, ‘My Favorites’ folder to keep locations stored, My TeleNav Internet browser plug-in to back up Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google toolbars.
The trend is still waiting to be caught on, but not for a want of striving. Dash rolled out one to the market, and of late revealed that they are thinking of putting a stop to manufacture of hardware, in its place seeking to put up the software capabilities for sale to other manufacturers (OEM’s and phones strike to mind). Magellan of late said that they were postponing work, Garmin’s Nuvifone has already been delayed – expectantly in 2009, while Mio has come up with their own co-development.
As for capabilities, the TeleNav seems to be in the middle, providing connected search, gas prices, updated traffic and map updates trusted through the cellular modem. They are not interested in talking about you & your GPS functioning as a GPS probe similar to the Dash Express did. They have also lacked the WiFi connectivity, which was offered by Dash, as it might have pushed prices with not all benefits initially supposed to be there. TeleNav also refers to a number of items that are yet to be completed or added, such as advanced address sharing and weather.
The Telenav Shotgun is priced at $299 and will be offered with a 3 month subscription to the connected services.
