Although the iRiver company from Korea is mostly known as a manufacturer of high-end, versatile and attractive portable multimedia players, it would seem that they're quite keen on expanding their product line-up towards other areas of the consumer electronics market as well. After we're read a while back about their intentions of launching an iPhone competitor, now we've come across another rather “peculiar” product, namely the CaroNavi, a GPS personal navigation device that, at least for the time being, will be available solely on the Japanese market.

This portable navigator from iRiver can be used either within your car, while riding a motorcycle or even in pedestrian mode, although the company's statement doesn't really provide any significant details regarding its possible additional uses.

The device, available in piano black, has been equipped with a 3.5-inch TFT LCD display, which allows users to view the navigation maps at a 320x240 pixels resolution. The maps can be stored either in the device's own memory (2 GB, flash) or on additional SD cards, since the PND also sports an extension slot of this type.

Another interesting feature provided by the CaroNavi is related to the fact that it can actually store phone numbers (up to 8,000,000 of them) associated to certain POIs (points of interest). Thus, if someone is looking for a certain location, he/she can immediately find out the phone number for the respective place.

iRiver's CaroNavi will hit the shelves in Japan at some point in mid-December and will sell for an estimate 29,800 Yen (roughly 322 US dollars), which is a pretty a regular price for a PND, albeit it remains to be seen whether it's a fair one or not when we'll get to hear more about this thing's features and specs (hopefully, when it arrives on other markets as well).


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