portable nav
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Asus joins the crowded portable GPS market with S102
Taking a saturated market and cramming yet another alternative in it is Asus, as its "first entry into the portable GPS market" looks to be yet another mundane offering with little to differentiate it. The S102 touts an internal antenna, SiRF Star III receiver, and "advanced natural voice technology" so those turn-by-turn instructions sound eerily lifelike. Other features include a 3.5-inch 320 x 240 resolution touchscreen, handwriting / voice recognition capabilities, 64MB of SDRAM, 64MB of Flash ROM, SD slot, external antenna jack, MP3 playback support, photo viewer, and a rechargeable Li-ion battery that should be good for about four hours. Although Asus was kind enough to belt out the specs, it left us hanging in regard to price or future availability, but we're sure it'll fit right in with all the others whenever it lands.[Via GPSGazette, thanks Dimitris]
Averatec launches Voya 350 handheld NAV
Averatec, a company known best for churning out laptops (and UMPCs as of late) has triangulated a route into the portable navigation market. The Voya 350, its first attempt in the lucrative GPS arena, is a handheld-sized unit that packs all the standard features you'd expect in such a device, and unfortunately not a whole lot more. Powered by a 300MHz Samsung CPU, 64MB of RAM, and operating on Windows CE.net, the Voya 350 displays turn-by-turn guidance while utilizing the usual NAVTEQ maps shown on the 3.5-inch TFT touch-screen. While no built-in hard drive is included, you can store excess data using the SD / MMC slot. Semi-noteworthy features include the 4 hours of battery life you can rely on while trekking in the rough, and weighing just 6 ounces, it makes for an easy tag-along. Although countless similar units have been available for quite some time, it's not really as if one more unit is going to water down the GPS receiver market aymore, so if you're hunting around for a portable nav device that's a tad easier on the wallet than other offerings, the Voya 350 -- albeit under-featured -- looks like a solid value, and can be located now for around $400.
