Garmin’s first in-car infotainment system comes to Suzuki vehicles

We’ve provided navigation solutions to automakers for quite some time now, but today we announced our first factory-installed infotainment system that has everything you’ll need behind the wheel. The system will be available for most American 2013 model year Suzuki vehicles and combines a 6.1-inch high-resolution touchscreen display with a full-featured infotainment platform, including AM/FM/CD radio, multi-media playback, backup camera support, Bluetooth^® hands-free connectivity, Pandora^® internet radio and Garmin’s award-winning navigation. The intuitive user interface with advanced voice control makes it easy to operate the system and switch between functions.

Here are some more details on the features of the new system:

Media and music integration: Music and media is integrated in multiple ways, providing users a wide range of options to choose from. This includes an integrated AM/FM radio and CD player as well as several interfaces that allow user to play music from external devices such as a mobile phone or iPod, including a USB and AUX jack, Bluetooth and a SD card slot. Also included is an integration with Pandora (via a connected smartphone[1]) that allows users to easily browse and select their personalized radio stations, skip a track or give a song a thumbs-up or down.

Navigation: The system integrates Garmin’s intuitive and award-winning navigation, providing premium road guidance with spoken turn-by-turn directions and street names, PhotoReal Junction View with lane guidance, optional traffic via TMC, speed limit and current speed displays, millions of points of interest, a customizable data menu and many other features. The navigation system has access to vehicle speed sensors to provide precise location information even when a GPS signal is not available, for example in tunnels. When switching to other menus, such as the music player, navigation directions will continue and visual cues will be displayed at the top of the screen. Map updates can easily be downloaded to a SD card from a Garmin Web portal.

Full voice control: Users can control the system with voice commands, which helps reduce driver distraction. This includes all the integrated functions, such as navigation, radio, CD player and Pandora. Garmin’s one-shot address entry technology allows user to speak a full address at once without going through multiple steps. Additionally, the system includes steering wheel control buttons on selected vehicles to activate voice recognition or directly control certain functions, such as the volume, switching between radio stations or accepting and ending calls.

Connected services: Real-time information, such as traffic, dynamic parking, weather and fuel prices, will be available through Garmin Smartphone Link[2]. This app can easily link an Android phone to the Suzuki infotainment system via Bluetooth. It utilizes the existing data connection of a smartphone to bring live services to the vehicle, so users don’t have to pay for an extra data plan.

Backup camera support: When backing up, the system automatically displays the backup camera on the screen, so drivers get a better view of what’s behind the vehicle.

Hands-free Bluetooth: The integrated Bluetooth calling function allows users to make calls hands free. A phone can easily be synced via Bluetooth and then controlled with voice commands.

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