I've been playing with my new iPhone for a week or so now (thanks Santa) and can't get enough.

If you are a regular reader of HardWired you will know that I have been in love with the Garmin Nuvi 660 for awhile.  The iPhone hasn't quite replaced my beloved Nuvi (named Lola) yet, but I do feel like I'm cheating on her.  The two together, especially sharing Bluetooth, have about everything I could need for navigation and communications on the road. 

iPhone

But the perfect device would be one that combines the best applications on both into one unit.  So here's my plea.. Apple needs to buy Garmin.  Or Garmin could buy Apple, I don't really care as this is not a plea for some major corporate merger.  It's simply a request to get together and make the perfect gizmo.

The user interface on the iPhone is magical.  The device has to use their GUI.  But the touchscreen has to come from Garmin.  Why?  Last week I was on a holiday ski trip to Sun Valley.  It's cold in Sun Valley in December and you can't use the iPhone touchscreen with gloves.  I had the Nuvi with me also and it works fine with gloves.  Try sitting on a chairlift in -4 wind chill and having to take off your glove to answer the phone.  Unless you are the most fair weather SoCal boater, you will welcome Garmin's touchscreen over the iPhone's when the temperature turns for the worse.

All of the iPhone's communications and productivity applications stay.  The email and phone work great, the wi-fi is awesome and the calendar and contacts sync up perfectly with Outlook.

Furthermore, the Safari Web browser is unbelievable on such a small device.  As Apple says, it's not like the internet, it is the internet.

Everyone knows about the iPOD and it works great on the iPhone so we're going to ditch the whole MP3 player on the Nuvi.  The digital camera is like no other phone-based camera either so that stays.

Now, where Garmin obviously shines is in the navigation and GPS market.  As much as I like Google Maps and Google Earth, the screen is just too small to really take advantage of those applications as they are in the iPhone.  The turn by turn 3D mapping in the Nuvi is how it should be.  Of course, the new device would also have a built in Garmin GPS sensor, something the iPhone suprisingly lacks.  Furthermore, it must be able to transmit the GPS signal over Bluetooth so desktop navigation systems, such as Nobeltec, could share the signal.  Nuvi 660

It should also have the Garmin Traffic receiver for traffic alerts as well as their excellent Points of Interest Database. 

To make the device even better than what either company offers, it needs to be open source so innovative 3rd Parties can develop appplications for it also.  For example, we definitely need a SlingBox application for live TV.

If the unit is open source there could be endless possibilities to use it onboard.  Not only would it serve as a great communications device as a standard cell phone and internet device, but the bluetooth capabilities to wirelessly control autopilots and man overboard systems would be simple.  It could act as a wireless remote for the VHF radio and there is no reason it couldn't be a wireless display for an IP based system such as Furuno's new NavNet 3D.

The device would also control the onboard entertainment system.

I finally have my gadgets down to two, if you don't include my TV remote, but one single one would be better.  Garmin and Apple are so far ahead right now at what they do best that it's time for a marriage.  There is no doubt they would produce the perfect product.