GPS specialist Garmin made a slew of announcements at CTIA this week. It is also showing off its first smartphone, the nuvifone, at the semi-annual conference and trade show.

In July, Garmin will release an update to Garmin Mobile, bringing Google Local search, an improved interface and more to its location-based user experience on a variety BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian-run smartphones.

Also, Garmin GPS navigator users will soon be able to send locations found on Google Maps and in MapQuest directly to their personal navigation device. It’ll works like this: you begin by searching for a specific business or a broader category – “Kansas City barbecue,” for example – and the results will appear on a map. The desired location can then be saved directly to the Garmin device through the Send-to function.

Third, Garmin Mobile is also now compatible with the BREW platform, which has the potential to greatly increase the number of handsets compatible with its services.

For the full lowdown on these and Garmin's other CTIA announcements, see here.

Meanwhile, below you'll find pictures we took of our hands-on experience with the nuvifone. We found it to be light, relatively compact and pretty rectangular. More importantly, if the smartphone, which features a pretty large and bright display, performs all the functions of Garmin's personal navigator, Garmin may just may have a winner on its hands.

 

The Garmin representative wouldn't tell us which smartphone platform the nuvifone runs on or what carrier will offer it in the U.S. However, because nuvifone does support GSM-style 3.5G cellular-wireless technology, it’s obvious AT&T is the only real candidate to do so.

Nuvifone isn't due to ship until the third quarter. Garmin hasn't said what it'll cost, however.

As with Garmin's GPS-only products, nuvifone sports a touch screen—measuring 3.5 inches in nuvifone case. Turn the screen on and you'll see icons labeled Call, Search, and View Map, representing nuvifone's most important functions.

Simply dock nuvifone in its vehicle mount to turn on the handset’s GPS radio, activate its navigation menu (which is similar to nuvi’) and enable hands-free calling, even when your in the middle of a call.

Nuvifone ships with preloaded maps of North America, Eastern and Western Europe, or both, and allows drivers to find a specific street address, establishment's name or search for a destination by category using a database with millions of points of interest.

These points of interests are greatly enhanced through support for Google local search capability, which nuvifone links to through a 3G cellular-wireless data connection.

Turn-by-turn, voice-prompted directions guide the user to their destination. If they miss a turn along the route, nuvifone – as with nuvi – automatically recalculates the route and gets them back on track, speaking the names of the streets along the way.

In addition to Web browsing, users can make use of nuvifone's wireless connectivity to send and receive e-mail, text, and instant messages, and to subscribe to Garmin Online to receive constantly updated real-time traffic, fuel prices, stock prices, sport scores, news reports, local events and weather forecasts.

You can play music and video on Nuvifone and take pictures or video with its integrated camera. However, unlike most other cell phone shooters, Nuvifone's allows you snap a picture and have it automatically tagged with the exact latitude and longitude reference of where it was taken. The phone also provides direct access to millions of geo-located landmark and sightseeing photographs at Google's Panoramio picture sharing site.