Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Garmin

Garmin Approach S3 Golf Watch Provides Assistance Across 27,000 Courses

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:05:23 +0000

Garmin has announced a new watch called the Garmin Approach S3 golf watch. This is an upgrade to the Approach S1. The Garmin Approach S3 has a touchscreen and provides assistance to 27,000 courses across the world. It won’t help you with the way you swing, but you will be able to see layup distances, green overviews, and yardages to the green. The watch is waterproof and has 8 hours of battery life. The watch retails for $350. Press release is below:

Garmin® Continues its Commitment to the Golf World with the Approach™ S3 Touchscreen GPS Golf Watch

OLATHE, Kan./April 3, 2012/Business Wire – Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced the Approach™ S3 touchscreen GPS golf watch – a stylish, rugged and waterproof, high-resolution glove-friendly touchcreen device that comes preloaded with 27,000 worldwide courses and counting, without subscriptions or fees. The Approach S3 is sleek enough to wear as a day to day timepiece and with features like Green View with manual pin positioning, distances to doglegs and layup points, customizable yardage points and digital scorecards golfers will have a “virtual” caddie with them during every stroke.

“With its new features, like the innovative Green View, digital scoring and design of the glove-friendly touchscreen, the Approach S3 creates a new advantage for golfers all over the world,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “It’s light-weight, it includes a round timer to keep track of time played and the color options will make it a talking point on and off the course.”

With the Approach S3, Garmin continues to make good on its promise toward free golf course information availability by offering 27,000 worldwide courses and counting. Golfers who find themselves travelling to unfamiliar courses throughout the world will have many of these courses available right out of the box. Garmin offers free course updates throughout the year that add new courses and make enhancements to the current lineup to help ensure accuracy. Just as courses change, so do the pin placements – with the new Green View feature golfers can see a true image of the current green and the flag can be adjusted for the current day’s pin placement with the simple touch of the screen. As adjusted, it displays the distance to the pin, front and back of the green. To see the S3 in action, go to www.garmin.com/golf.

Weighing a mere two ounces, the Approach S3′s high-resolution sunlight readable touchscreen display provides large, bright numbering so that it does not slow down the game. The Approach S3 even offers layup distances. Golfers can add custom points on the watch that they want to measure or zero in on hazards or obstacles that may affect their shot, and zoom in for a closer look at the green. With eight hours of playing time on one charge and lasting up to four weeks as a day to day timepiece the S3 makes it easy to charge its internal battery. Its custom charging cradle is a small magnetic clip that fastens to the S3 with ease and can be set down with the peace of mind that it will be ready, with a full charge, to take to the course the following morning.

Keeping track of a player’s score throughout the round is made simple with the Approach S3. Golfers can review their scores right on the device, or download and access a printable version of their own round on their computer. Scoring options include Stroke Play and Stableford.

The new Approach S3 is expected to be available in April 2012 and will have a suggested retail price of $349.99. The S3 will be available in both golf white with red trim and black with gray trim options and gives users the power to select between white or black background colors. Approach S3 is the latest solution from Garmin’s growing outdoor segment, which focuses on developing technologies and innovations to enhance users’ outdoor experiences. Whether it’s Golfing, Hiking, Hunting or Geocaching, Garmin outdoor devices are becoming essential tools for outdoor enthusiast of all levels. For more information about Garmin’s other outdoor products and services, go to http://www.garmin.com/us/products/onthetrail/, www.garmin.blogs.com and http://twitter.com/garmin.

GPS Company Garmin Acquires Navigon

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:28:42 +0000

GPS device company Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRMN) has acquired European competitor Navigon AG. The financial details of this transaction was undisclosed, but it is rumored to be worth around $72 million. Navigon will now become a subsidiary of Garmin. Germany based GPS company Navigon produces navigation software and manufactures GPS devices. Navigon also has GPS applications for Android and the iPhone. [TechCrunch]

Garmin GTU 10 GPS Stalking Device Now Available For Pre-Order

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:17:54 +0000

At CES Garmin announced the GTU 10 personal tracking device. The GTU 10 is 3 inches tall and weighs only 1.7 ounces. It can be tracked on a smartphone or computer. The thing even has a geofence so you will be instantly notified if your husband is actually at Hooters instead of at work. I think this device would be good if you run a logistic company and you want to monitor your truck freight. The GTU 10 is now available for pre-order with a suggested retail price of $199.99. The GTU 10 will be shipping in the first quarter of this year. [LA Times]

Garmin Unleashes A New Series Of nüvi 2400 GPS Devices and StreetPilot iPhone app

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 19:24:54 +0000

Garmin sent out a press release today to announce the nüvi 2400 series of GPS devices. The company has also released its first iPhone navigation application called StreetPilot. The nüvi 2400 series of GPS devices has 4 different models and comes with live-traffic updating, hands-free calling, voice activated navigation, and lifetime map updates.

All four models have a 5-inch display and Bluetooth connection. “All models feature nüRoute with trafficTrends and myTrends predictive routing,” said the company in the press release. “With trafficTrends, nüvi automatically learns traffic flow trends to improve route calculation and better predict the estimated time of arrival based on time of day and day of week.” As time goes on, the GPS will remember your favorite destinations.

The StreetPilot iPhone application [iTunes Link] has free traffic alerts, lane assist, and speed limit indicators. Multi-tasking is supported on the app and it costs $39.99. The download size is about 7.5MB and it needs an Internet connection to download the maps.

[BoyGeniusReport]

Garmin Is Now Shipping The Nuvi 1690

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:25:02 +0000

Top GPS company Garmin is now shipping one of their newest devices, the nüvi 1690. The 1690 is selling for $499.99 and has real-time access to Google.com, traffic and flight status updates, and the white pages. Here’s the catch: the service only lasts for 2 years for free.

Garmin Launches A GPS Device For Bicyclist Called Edge 500

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:05:07 +0000

Garmin is usually best known for making GPS devices intended for motor vehicles, but the company has decided to make a useful tracking device for bicyclists now too. The Edge 500 is a GPS device that reports to bicyclists how long they have been riding, their average speed, their average heart rate, distance traveled, and power.

The device weighs 2 oz. and attaches to the handlebars of the bike. The GPS device also has a receiver that doesn’t require calibration. The Edge 500 is also ANT+ compatible with third party power meters. The climb and descent functions uses internal barometric altimeters and is compatible with Garmin’s line of wireless speed/cadence sensors. The battery life is about 18 hours and the device sells for about $249.99. To get the GPS device bundled with the heart rate monitor and speed/cadence sensor, the device costs $100 more.

Garmin Rino 120 GPS Is Waterproof and Works Like A Walkie Talkie

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:56:53 +0000

The Garmin Rino 120 is a waterproof FRS/GMRS radio and GPS navigator. There is a built in basemap, voice scrambler, and vibrate mode. The Rino Position Reporting faeture can send your exact location to other Rino users in the group.

Since there is a FRS/GMRS radio, the device can also be used to communicate with other Rino 120 devices nearby. For extra security, the Rino 120 can scramble radio signals. About 500 favorites can be added in the memory. There are 8MB of internal memory so that additional detailed maps can be added. The cost of the device is $267.84.

[via UberGizmo/Garmin product page]