NuviPhone shown for real?

It has been a while since we last heard about Garmin's NuviPhone - which is now a joint partnership between Garmin and Asus, it was still a prototype at best. And the few that had seen the light of day were buggy and hardly usable. But now, a working NuviPhone has been seen in Barcelona, and people were mostly impressed with it.

The phone has come a very long way since we last saw it, with a snappy, smooth interface, and nary a glitch or crash. The touchscreen keyboard -- usable in portrait and landscape modes -- is no pretender to the iPhone's throne, but is one of the best we've seen on a resistive touch device. We also found the WebKit-based browser to be one of the smoother ones we've seen outside the T-Mobile G1 and the iPhone.

I doubt this phone will gain a significant marketshare in light of the Apple iPhone, Google Android, and Palm Pre. But it is never a bad thing to have a good competitor in the market to keep the big guys honest. And I do love my Garmin Nuvi GPS.