Garmin iQue 3600

Despite its poor battery life, Garmin's iQue 3600 is a powerful Palm OS handheld and an accomplished GPS navigation device.

Design
For a handheld with a GPS receiver and a large 320 by 480-pixel display, the iQue 3600 is relatively light and compact, weighing 162g and measuring 7.2cm by 12.8cm by 2.0cm. The depth tapers slightly to about 1.5cm, making the device a bit more pocketable.

The protective cover of most handhelds attaches to the top of the device, but on the iQue the attachment moves to the bottom, giving up the standard position for the flip-up GPS receiver. To begiin satellite acquisition, you turn on the unit and pop open the antenna, whose hinge lets you choose the best angle for reception.

The Palm launch and scroll buttons below the display are standard, but one of them is mapped (no pun intended) to switch between the GPS map-related screens. You zoom in and out of maps using the scroll wheel, while the Escape key lets you exit an application. Those two controls are on the left-hand side, which is useful when your stylus hand is occupied.

The iQue 3600 comes with a sturdy but heavy synchronisation cradle and an AC adapter, whose outlet prongs fold in to save space. We also appreciated the little power socket on the bottom of the device, which enables you to leave the cradle at home when you travel.

Features
Although Palm and Sony have moved to Intel and Texas Instruments processors, Garmin has stuck with the traditional Motorola option for the iQue 3600. But at 200MHz, the DragonBall MXL ARM 9 processor is no relic, and the iQue 3600's Palm OS 5.2.1 and 32MB of RAM are similarly up-to-date. Additional storage -- a must if you want to load large maps -- is available via the Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard (SD/MMC) slot.

Clearly, the iQue 3600's main attraction is its built-in GPS receiver, which takes advantage of satellite-based augmentation systems to increase the accuracy of the GPS plotting. In the US, this is the US FAA and Department of Transportation's wide-area augmentation system (WAAS), while in Europe we have EGNOS, which uses the same system to provide data over here. EGNOS is currently in testing, and is due to go live April 2004. However, the iQue 3600 will use the test data that is currently being transmitted to increase location accuracy.

With 12 channels, this GPS device can connect to up to 12 satellites simultaneously, although only 4 are required for a 3D location fix. As we mentioned, the receiver flips up, and you can adjust the antenna to get the best reception.

To complement the receiver, Garmin provides Cityselect Europe covering the whole of Europe. Going beyond simple navigation, this software also offers traffic directions and restrictions, as well as more than 5 million points of interest. You can install all the maps on your computer and download the ones you need to the handheld. You can't load third-party maps such as Rand McNally StreetFinder. Cityselect Americas and Pacific software is available at £193 (ex. VAT) each.

The iQue 3600 comes with a large software collection for use with the GPS and the maps. The programs are well integrated with the address-book and even date-book databases. When you select a contact's address in QueRoutes, the iQue 3600 will plot a course to that location. You can also attach a destination to a calendar entry to give yourself directions to your next meeting. Other applications let you plan trips stop by stop, record your route, calculate distances and travel times, and find points of interest such as banks, restaurants, theatres and hotels.

In stark contrast to the powerful mapping tools, the iQue 3600's other Palm programs are sparse. Aside from a decent audio application/MP3 player and the PowerOne calculator, the software CD contains little more than Palm Desktop 4.1, Palm Reader and some third-party demos.

Performance
The iQue 3600 has a speedy 200MHz processor to handle the resource-intensive tasks of map zooming and redrawing. Nevertheless, the device paused occasionally while redrawing some complex urban areas. Palm OS 5.2.1 enables support for more system RAM; we suggest you supplement the internal 32MB with a 128MB SD card to make sure you have room for your maps.

Like Sony's larger CLIEs, the iQue 3600 has a spacious 320 by 480-pixel transflective screen that can deliver 65,536 colors. We thought the display looked great indoors with the backlight on; map detail was crisp and clear down to the smallest icons. Viewing in direct sunlight with the backlight off returned similarly pleasing results and saved some juice -- just don't blind yourself by holding the iQue 3600 at the wrong angle. Sound was also good and loud enough for listening to tunes comfortably even in the noisiest environments.

The iQue was a bit poky getting its first satellite fix, taking about four minutes. Reconnecting was substantially faster at a minute or less when our location was open to the sky. The unit lost its fix only when we tarried too long under an overpass or between skyscrapers.

The iQue 3600 is also adept at calculating and giving directions. A smooth female voice announces how many miles you are from an upcoming turn, then repeats the turn command when you get within a few hundred metres. Although the screen tells you street names, the voice understandably doesn't: imagine a computer trying to pronounce Gough, Duboce, and Guerrero. If you stray off course, the iQue 3600 quickly finds a new route with which to guide you.

Unfortunately, the iQue 3600 has a glaring weakness: battery life. The gluttonous display and GPS receiver quickly sap power. For our test, we ran a movie in Kinoma Player with the screen brightness at 50 percent. After 2 hours and 11 minutes, the low-battery warning appeared, and the backlight automatically dimmed to about 10 percent. The device completely ran out of steam at the 3-hour mark. Performance will be a bit better with the GPS receiver as long as you minimise backlight use: one charge got us approximately 3 hours and 45 minutes of intermittent GPS activity. The iQue 3600 also has a battery-saving mode, in which the unit syncs with satellites as little as possible.

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