Ultra-small TomTom PND upcoming?

We haven't yet fully recovered from what seemed to be an endless stream of new product announcements for the end of this year, and already the first rumours of new products for 2007 are starting to emerge. In this specific case we're talking about a new ultra-small TomTom product which should be introduced in March 2007.

Smaller

Info on this new unit is still pretty scarce, but one thing is already clear: where most other manufacturers choose to only release bigger and wider screens, TomTom may very well choose to do the opposite and release a unit with 'only' a 2.8 inch screen. We've based this conclusion on the fact that a Taiwanese parts-production facility has recently received an order from TomTom to produce a batch of these touch screens.

TomTom's choice for a 2.8 inch screen is surprising, since this screen size has hardly ever been used in PND land up to now. The major reason for this is probably because 2.8 inch screens actually cost more to produce that the widely available 3.5 inch screens.

Advantages

There are also advantages to a small screen, of course. The most obvious one is that a smaller screen obviously makes for a smaller, lighter unit. This will be of interest to a new target audience: cyclists (and maybe even pedestrians).

Two PND's which already feature a 2.8 inch screen are Fujitsu-Siemens' Pocket LOOX N100 and Pocket LOOX N110. Both devices measure only 62 mm x 82 mm x 16 mm, and have truly earned the certificate of 'ultra-small'. But we're guessing that TomTom's new unit will be even smaller than that! A weight of less than 100 grams should certainly be achievable.

We have added an artist's impression of the new TomTom MINI (as we'll call it for now) to this article. This clearly shows how the estimated dimensions of the new unit compare to the dimensions of the well-known TomTom GO x10 units.