Yes, I’m happy to announce that Garmin-Asus is giving away a brand new phone to a lucky reader here :)

Update: We have a winner! See below for more details.

I’ve lost count how many phone GPS’s I’ve used before, but the Garmin Asus M10 seriously blows any GPS device I’ve used out of the water. 

The screen is large (3.5), and the interface is simple to understand and read. 

It also offers

• Lane assist (so you know which lane to keep to),
• Text to speech (reads out road names)
• Junction-view (gives you a picture of the approaching junction so there’s no confusion)

and it has a really powerful built-in GPS which locks on to signals quickly, and even works perfectly well without A-GPS (It also supports A-GPS). 

For ease of use, navigation functions are built directly into the shortcut menu for easy access, and it comes with a nifty car-kit as well.

In short, it’s a full featured Garmin GPS device with a Windows Mobile 6.5.3 phone squeezed in.

Lacking the messaging prowess of a BlackBerry, the media experience of an iPhone, and the Google & web functionality of an Android, Windows Mobile systems have long had the unglamorous tag of being able to do everything, but doing nothing particularly well.    This phone however, does navigation supremely well, so you have to consider this…  This phone does everything a top of the line standalone Garmin GPS does.  Throw in a little bit more money, and you have yourself an all-in-one SmartPhone device. 

The giveaway: Update: We have a winner! See below for more details.

1 unit Garmin Asus M10 GPS Phone shipped directly to you.  The phone is expected to retail at anywhere from USD540 to USD600.

How to get the giveaway

1. Drop a comment saying you want the phone

OR

2. Tweet this post and add the hashtag #friedbeefgiveaways

If you do both, it counts as two entries.

and after a week, I’ll randomly pick one lucky winner (via random.org) to walk away with the prize!

Garmin-Asus is a proud contributor to the 33 trees project and is not only giving away awesome stuff but is helping to make the world a better place.

Update: 31/3/2010: We’ve a good 362 entries across twitter & this website… so I’m proud to announce the winner as….*drumroll*…
‘Chingy’ aka twitter.com/cheeChingy !

Thank you to all those who participated. Eventhough, you didn’t win, you made an important contribution in making this round’s 33 trees giveaway a success.

Accidents happen. 
If you’re ever in a situation where your phone is giving you problems because you got caught in the rain, or dropped it in the sink or toilet, here are 5 steps you can try:

1. Turn the device off and do not charge it – You want to keep the phone non-operational while it dries out.
2. Drip dry and shake off as much water as possible
3. Dismantle whatever you can – If you are able to remove the battery and cover, do so.  The more you expose the better it will dry.
4. Cover your phone in a bowl of rice – Rice will help absorb moisture (at least it did for this Washington Post writer) like how it does in salt shakers.
5. Draw it away with a vacuum cleaner held over the affected areas for up to 20 minutes in each accessible area, having already removed the majority of liquids and moisture manually and dried all visible moisture by hand, so that none enters the vacuum cleaner. This method is preferable to leaving it to dry naturally as it halts any oxidation from occurring deep inside, such as can result in functional issues later on. This is the fastest way (less than thirty minutes after your phone drowns, it can be completely dry and working, especially if you are able to also partly or fully disassemble it) to quickly get all the internal moisture out of the phone effectively and stop the internals from ‘rotting’ away. Remember that the goal is to suck all the moisture and humidity out of the phone not to blow it even further in and create even more evil humidity deep inside

All in all, the idea here is to get it as dry as as possible – in as quick a time as possible.  You’d be surprised how many phones spring back to life once they are dried out.  Speaking from experience, I once completely submerged my trusty old Nokia 3315 several times during a camping trip (I forgot it was in my pocket).  I just dried it out, and it was just as good as new :)

Note: Fans and hair dryers are not a good ideas as they tend to force moisture further into the small components deep inside the phone eventually causing corrosion.

Update: 17th April 2008: Point 5 changed from refrigeration to drying with a vacuum cleaner (Thanks WikiHow)

On a related note, here’s a video on how to fix your laptop should you spill liquid on it.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=5Eu1b8EA0tM[/youtube]

Have you ever dropped your phone into water?  Tell us about it in the comments!