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GPS systems are estimated to be one of the top growth areas in consumer products this year, as they were in 2007. A number of manufacturers are building GPS systems, including Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, Trimble and Hewlett-Packard. Each has its own approach to a GPS solution, but at the end of the day, the systems all fit into a relatively similar form factor.
Today you can find GPS in a wide variety of products, from built-in vehicle navigation systems to cell phones and watches. Companies are finding that GPS is a relatively simple way to increase the functionality of portable devices without significantly increasing the overall cost to manufacture, since many of the requisite components (such as the processor and memory) are already in the products. The only additions some systems need are a GPS receiver and the software revisions necessary to operate it.
The two GPS systems analyzed for this teardown were relatively new products: the Garmin nuvi 750 and the HP iPaq 310. The only similarity we found between them was a design win in both systems for Wolfson, although for different functionality. Other than that, the two companies have come up with their own spins on how to design a GPS system with more or less the same shape and size.
Garmin nuvi 750
The nuvi has a 4.3-inch screen with a resolution of 480 × 272 pixels. It weighs about 176 grams and has a 1,250-milliampere-hour (mAh) lithium-ion battery. The 750 model does not have Bluetooth...