The fist quarter of 2010 is a very exciting one with the rumored debut of the Garmin-Asus Android Phone. Asustek associate vice president for marketing Jacqueline Yang however said the smartphone could come earlier than that and this is virtually the first confirmation that such a phone is indeed in the production process.

Prior to its merge with Asus, Garmin has already indicated its intention to come up with an Android phone. However, there are still doubts as to the possible release of their first Android smartphone by next year considering the delay in the announcement of their first phone.

Garmin is known for its turn-by-turn navigation feature and Garmin-Asus plans to make better use of this location awareness feature by making it a built-in feature along with the geotagging ability on any photo. Garmin-Asus already has G60 which is a Linux-based phone. It is not however sure if the proprietary operating system will exist with the Android.

The delay in the supposedly June release of the Garmin-Asus handset was attributed to problems related with the development of the proprietary Linux OS. Switching to Android may just possibly hasten things up.