Pharos Traveler 137 is a GPS satnav phone with huge display

US cellphone maker Pharos officially introduced the Traveler 137 GPS-enabled smartphone, which is the proud winner of the CES 2009 Innovation award. The Traveler 137 sports a full-featured satnav app and a huge 3.5-inch screen with WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels).

The Pharos Traveler 137 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 and has quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support (1700/1900/2100MHz) plus Wi-Fi (802.11b/g). The device will be sold unlocked to both AT&T and T-Mobile customers, however there's no support for the AT&T 3G bands.

The Traveler 137 also sports 3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.1, microSD/SDHC card slot and a 528MHz Qualcomm CPU with 256MB SDRAM/512MB ROM.

The most distinguishing feature of the Pharos Traveler 137 however is the preinstalled full-featured navigation software by Pharos called Smart Navigator. The application uses vector maps and manages various routing calculations and can also provide real-time traffic and POI search.

An additional feature of the Smart Navigator software called Follow Me allows your friends and family to view your location through the internet or from another Windows Mobile device.

The Smart Navigator comes with free US maps, but maps of other regions can be bought separately (maps of Canada, West and East Europe with China, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil are up for grabs now).

Interestingly, the Smart Navigator service doesn't require a monthly fee, but instead it works on a a pay-as-you-go basis much like Nokia Maps (licenses can be bought on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis).

The Pharos Traveler 137 will be available late in Q1 2009 with an expected price of 600 US dollars.