So here’s a nice treat for all of you on a Friday evening. We got our hands on an early version of T-Mobile’s upcoming BlackBerry Bold 9700 and took some time to shoot a brief, sneak-peek video of TeleNav GPS Navigator running on the phone. While there are a number of videos of the phone posted out there on that “series of connected tubes” the rest of us like to call the Internet, I think we’re the first blog to deliver this exclusive demo of our navigation app running on the phone. That’s right, consider it our little gift to you before you head out and pick up the phone next Monday, Nov. 16. If you’re thinking about picking up the phone, I can personally say that it’s a very impressive device. The folks over at RIM did away with the trackball and introduced a new touchpad, which worked very well for me while I was testing the device. The phone’s also very sleek in terms of design, so you can definitely count on it making your friends jealous when you pull it.
As you can see in the video, not only do I assume that all of you out there watching are “party people,” but TeleNav GPS Navigator does a great job of getting me and my camera man Ryan to the local Bank of America. Some of the features I bring up in the video include the ability to share addresses with your contacts, day/night mode, smart spell recognition and the quality of the text-to-speech function.
Enjoy the video and let us know what you think of TeleNav GPS Navigator on the new BlackBerry Bold 9700 or any of the other phones we support. We always appreciate your feedback. Have a great weekend.
Well, the new phones continue to come down the pipeline and the latest is the Samsung Moment for the Sprint Network. The Moment is an Android based device and after having the chance to play around with it, I must say it’s one very slick device. And even better, Sprint Navigation (powered by TeleNav) worked beautifully on the device, with the large touch screen providing an excellent view of the application for easy navigation.
We decided to hop in the car and take the Samsung Moment and Sprint Navigation for a quick spin. It was around lunch time and I was craving some Indian food, so you’ll see in the video that we conducted a search for Indian restaurants in our area. Some of the features you’ll see in the demo video include visual and audio turn-by-turn directions, full text-to-speech including spoken street names, real-time traffic information and our point of interests search including rated listings.
The Samsung Moment hit stores this past Sunday, November 1. If you’re looking for a new phone and want something that will make your friends jealous, the Samsung Moment may be the phone for you. If you’ve already picked one up, tell us what you think about Sprint Navigation. We always appreciate your feedback.
AT&T and Pantech launched a new device this week, the Pantech Reveal, which is Pantech’s first “single-slider” phone. Overall, the phone has a nice feel to it and the inclusion of two key pads, the number pad when the slider is closed and the full keyboard when it’s open, makes it very handy to use. You can quickly dial a number with the slider closed and easily slide out the keyboard for messaging purposes. But perhaps the best feature in our humble opinion is that the phone comes preloaded with AT&T Navigator (powered by TeleNav).
We decided to take the Pantech Reveal out for a little spin and test some of the features included in AT&T Navigator on the phone. And because sharing is caring, we thought we’d bring along a video camera to show you the application in action. As you can see, it was very easy for me to find the destination I wanted to drive to and head out on my way. Some of the features you’ll see in the video include onscreen and voice turn-by-turn directions, text-to-speech (i.e. turn right on Kifer Road, not just turn right), real-time traffic alerts and the ease in which the POI database can be used to find a location.
Enjoy the video and if you picked up a Reveal or are planning to, let us know what you think of AT&T Navigator on the phone.
If you’re an iPhone owner using AT&T Navigator, you may have noticed that an update to the application became available last week. Hopefully you’ve had the chance to update your app and get a look at the new features. BUT, for those of you who haven’t had time to do this yet or who may not have found all of the updates within the application, we thought we’d shoot a brief video demonstrating a few of the new features.
This video includes the new support for landscape view while navigating, integrated iPod controls and improved audio. Enjoy the video and keep the feedback coming on what you’d like to see added to the AT&T Navigator for iPhone application or any of the other applications we develop here at TeleNav.
As some of you may know, last week CTIA held its annual Wireless I.T. & Entertainment event at the San Diego Convention Center. This event is always an exciting time in the mobile industry as many new phones are announced, cool new applications are launched, and a number of awards are handed out. A group of us from TeleNav headed down to San Diego for a few days to catch up with old friends in the industry and get a first-hand look of everything that was happening at the show. The San Diego weather and views (like this one from our hotel below) were a nice bonus.
Marina in San Diego
There was a lot going on for TeleNav last week in San Diego, so we thought we’d provide a brief recap. First off, there were a number of new phones announced last week that feature the apps we develop for some of our carrier partners including AT&T Navigator and Sprint Navigation as well as our own TeleNav GPS Navigator application. AT&T announced four upcoming phones including the Pantech Reveal, Pantech Impact, Samsung Mythic, and Samsung Flight. Sprint also announced a new phone, the Samsung Moment. And we can’t forget T-Mobile, which also came to play with the announcement of new phones including a myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition phone and the newly announced T-Mobile Tap. I can’t wait for the chance to play with some of these phones. And while that’s an impressive lineup of devices, the image below of some phones sporting the applications we develop is pretty impressive as well. We showed these phones at the Pepcom Mobile Focus press event.
An impressive lineup of phones
People enjoying the Pepcom Mobile Focus event
But that’s not all. Ravi Acharya, associate director of marketing for TeleNav’s B2B products, also participated on a panel at CTIA titled “Public and Corporate Fleets” where he discussed the benefits of our TeleNav Track products. TeleNav was also up for two awards last week for our TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 application. We were named a finalist in the Best Mobile Consumer Application category for the CTIA Hot for the Holidays Award. Jitterbug took the top honor for its LiveNurse application, so congrats to everyone at Jitterbug. We were also up for a Location 2.0 Summit Fast-Pitch Award in the Consumer Application category. We’re still waiting on those results, so keep your fingers crossed for us.
Ravi Acharya speaking at CTIA
As you can see, it was a very busy week for us, but we all had a great time and appreciated everyone from the CTIA, Pepcom and Location 2.0 events being so helpful to us.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about the HTC Hero on Sprint. With the number of mobile phones that come out each year, it seems like only a few phones generate significant buzz before they launch and the Hero is one of those phones. Sprint launched the Hero yesterday and you guessed it, Sprint Navigation (powered by TeleNav) is available on the phone.
I got my hands on the Hero prior to the launch and took it for a spin and I have to say, I was really impressed with the phone’s performance and overall look and feel. While I was giving the phone a test drive, I decided to shoot this brief video of Sprint Navigation guiding me around here in Sunnyvale. As you can see, the app looks great on the phone and got me exactly where I wanted to go.
In the video you’ll see me using and mentioning a number of features built into Sprint Navigation including a POI search to find the bank I was navigating too. I also mention some of the other categories available in the more than 10 million POIs including gas by price, air ports and Wi-Fi hotspots. I also used the app in landscape mode and decided to try and throw it off by missing some turns to show how quickly it was able to calculate a new route and get me heading in the right direction.
I hope you enjoy this brief video and if you’ve already picked up a new Hero or are planning to, be sure to check out Sprint Navigation. And when you do, don’t hesitate to tell us what you think.
Some of you may have seen the rumors floating around lately regarding the applications that will come preloaded on Motorola’s upcoming CLIQ phone, the company’s first Android device running on T-Mobile’s network. Well, today T-Mobile officially announced details surrounding the CLIQ, including the preloaded applications and the date you can preorder this very cool device. We’re happy to say that TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 will be one of the applications CLIQ owners will be able to fire up from the first day they get their hands on the device. The service will come with a free two-week trial so CLIQ users can try the application out first hand. After that, users can get turn-by-turn directions, real-time traffic information, more than 10 million points of interest and spoken address entry capabilities for $9.99/mo.
You can preorder the CLIQ starting Oct. 19 and it will be available in stores on Nov. 2, right in time for the holiday season. To give you a little taste of TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 running on the CLIQ, we took the phone out for a little drive around our headquarters here in Sunnyvale. As you’ll see in the video, the application for the CLIQ got us right to where we needed to go and did it in style, with cool features such as flipping to landscape mode when the physical keyboard slides out.
All of you T-Mobile subscribers be sure to check out the CLIQ and all of the preloaded apps including our TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5. You won’t be disappointed.
Samsung and Sprint are partnering to bring the new Samsung Instinct HD phone to you this Sunday, Sept. 27. As you can see in the video, I had a chance to play with the phone for a few days and I’ll tell you that there’s something really sexy about this little device. The Instinct HD felt really solid as a piece of hardware and the touchscreen has a nice response and tactile feel to it, which kept me from ever guessing if the phone recorded my touch or not.
I decided to hop in my trusty Corolla S (Toyota, you can address the check to me) which is now becoming famous on our YouTube channel thanks to previous demos. For this trip, I decided to head to a local Bank of America branch and as you can see, Sprint Navigation (powered by TeleNav) on the new Samsung Instinct HD got me there without a hitch. What was most impressive to me was the speed at which the application fired up and had me on my way.
Some of the features you’ll see in the video demo include full text-to-speech with spoken street names, a POI search (from the more than 10 million that are included with the app), and you’ll hear the application search for traffic congestion along our route. Fortunately in this demo I didn’t run into any traffic issues, which for the Bay Area, is pretty rare.
Enjoy the video and check out the Samsung Instinct HD on Sprint, it’s definitely the type of phone that will make your friends jealous. And who among us doesn’t enjoy doing that.
Time is ticking away for you to win one of the biggest prizes we’ve ever given away here on the TeleNav Blog. You only have four days left to enter to win a full year of TeleNav service for you and a friend. The season of giving is quickly approaching, so why not get a head start and hook one of your friends or family members up with GPS navigation on their mobile phone. Just think, they’ll never be able to blame getting lost as the reason they missed your wedding again.
So how do I enter you ask? It’s very easy. All you have to do is click on THIS LINK and visit the original contest post. Leave a comment as to why your friend deserves (or in most cases NEEDS) TeleNav’s GPS navigation application on their phone and we’ll select the best five entries. As I mentioned above, the winners get a year of service for themselves and the friend or family member they nominated. To all of you couples out there, this is your chance to finally end one of the arguments that has plagued humankind for centuries.
But wait, there’s more. As part of our extended 10 Year Anniversary Celebration, we thought it would be great to give readers of our blog an inside peek into what life is like inside the friendly confines of the TeleNav offices. So, we took some time to visit with employees in our Seattle and Sunnyvale offices to shoot a brief video and ask them a few questions about what it’s like being part of the TeleNav family. Oh, and keep an eye out for a special edition of “TeleNav Idol” with our own versions of Randy, Paula and Simon (we later had our own Ellen announce that she was replacing Paula). We hope you enjoy this short video on life at TeleNav and if you want to see more, you can view some fun pictures of BBQs, team outings and other events at TeleNav here. Now go enter that contest!
We all know someone who seems to always be getting lost or arriving to events “fashionably late.” Well, here’s your chance to help that person out and give them the gift of GPS navigation right on their phone. Better yet, you don’t have to pay for the gift and you’ll even get it for yourself too! That’s right, we’re giving away a total of TEN (two for each winning entry) one-year subscriptions to TeleNav’s GPS navigation applications including TeleNav GPS Navigator and applications we develop for our carrier partners including AT&T Navigator, Alltel Navigation and Sprint Navigation. That means if your friend has an Apple iPhone, T-Mobile myTouch 3G or G1, BlackBerry or any of the hundreds of devices we support, you can hook them up.
It’s easy to submit as well. To enter to win, visit MONDAY’S BLOG POST and leave a comment explaining why your friend deserves to win one of the GPS navigation applications we develop. Full contest details are available for review in the post as well.
While you’re deciding which of your friends is most deserving of your generosity, here are a couple of fun mobile phone facts*. As you may know, TeleNav celebrated it’s 10th anniversary last week and we thought we’d show you how things have changed from the day our doors opened in 1999 to now. Enjoy!
Top Five Carriers in 1999 - AT&T, Vodaphone Airtouch, SBC Wireless, Bell Atlantic Mobile, Bell South Mobile Systems.
Top Five Carriers Today - Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Alltel
Total Wireless Subscribers in 1999 - 86 million
Total Wireless Subscribers Today - 270.3 million (entering 2009)
Total Wireless Revenues in 1999 - $40 billion
Total Wireless Revenues Today - $148 billion
Cell sites in the US in 1999 - 81,698
Cell sites in the US Today - 192,068
Average number of minutes used per month in 1999 - 242
Average number of minutes used per month in 2009 - 800
Average monthly mobile phone bill in 1999 - $41.24
Average monthly mobile phone bill in 2009 - $50.07 (at end of 2008)
Cleary times have changed in the past 10 years. Now, go enter that contest and scoop up some free GPS navigation service for yourself and a friend.
* Data referenced from Telephony Magazine, the FCC, CTIA, RCR Wireless, IE Market Research and JD Power.
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