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In a pretty surprising press release, the Garmin-Asus nuviphone G60 is set to hit Taiwanese retail stores on July 27, while Singapore and Malaysia will be receiving the same phone by late August.  Let’s not forget about the M20 which is set to reach Asian countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia by late August.  The main difference between the G60 and M20 is the fact that the M20 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, while the G60 runs on Linux.  In terms of availability in Europe and the United States, Garmin-Asus expects both phones to be available sometime in the second half of 2009, while carriers and pricing will be announced in the coming months.

As you can probably imagine, Garmin-Asus put a lot of emphasis on the navigation part of the phone and GPS users will enjoy its innovative GPS functionality.  In terms of preloaded maps, both the G60 and M20 feature maps of North America, Europe, or specific Asian countries.  Expect turn-by-turn directions and A-GPS technology, which allows for map coverage even when you don’t have service.  Since it is a cell phone, features such as 3.5G connectivity, text messaging, email access, Wi-Fi connectivity, and Bluetooth are standard.  The full HTML browser is another nice feature to give the user strong access to the Internet. 

It will be interesting to see how many Garmin-Asus nuviphones are released in the initial July 27 launch.  In addition, it will be interesting to see the public’s reaction to another strong smartphone and how it stacks up to the iPhone and Palm Pre.

Read: [Garmin-Asus Press Release]