people are still using 2008 gps navigation?

Above is a Garmin nuvi 205 GPS navigator, a model released in early 2008. And yes, it's my 205 because I have a collection of Garmin navigators just because I like them. After all, I do use a modern Garmin DriveSmart 76.

What's truly amazing however is how many people are still using the '08 stuff. Why? The answer is interesting.

One of the more important things to know about GPS navigation is that it came into existence well before decent smartphone navigation. And by decent I mean there really wasn't anything good for phone navigation until 2012. Prior to that, when you wanted GPS navigation, you got a personal navigation device or PND for short. And that's where little Garmin screens fit in.

The Garmin nuvi first came on the market in 2007, so there was this period from '07 to '12 where people who wanted GPS bought Garmin. Yes, there were other brands, but Garmin obviously had the lion's share of the market. The PND that sold the best was the 200 series. Specifically, models 200, 205, 255 and 260. Why those? Price. Buyers naturally gravitated towards the lower end models solely for that reason.

A 200 series Garmin nuvi is the Ford Mustang of the GPS world. I call it that because in the late '60s, Ford cranked out as many Mustangs as they could build as fast as they could make them, which is why to this day you can still pick up a late '60s Mustang for cheap. Similarly, in the late 2000s, Garmin cranked out as many 200 series nuvi GPSes as they could get made, which is why you can get one of those for next to nothing. You can even find some still sealed/new in the blister pack on eBay.

Where PND history is concerned, this is where the interesting part happens.

Okay. Smartphone navigation gets good, everybody likes it and totally forgets about the Garmin PNDs...

...until the early 2020s. After about 8 years, this is when navigation on the phone started to show some cracks in the armor. It didn't matter what nav app was used, but what did matter is that the near-perfect navigation experience just wasn't there anymore.

What made phone navigation suffer was a combination of newer phones constantly turning off the GPS antenna ("GPS Signal Lost" is very common), app bloat, never-ending "updates", questionable UI changes, and of course bad directions that angered users left and right.

This anger heated up to the point where people just stopped using nav apps. However, they still needed navigation, so then came up the question of, "Hey, what about that old Garmin?"

And out comes that dusty nuvi 200 series that's been sitting in the closet for years. Yes, it's old. Yes, it's slow. But with a cheap USB power lead, 32GB memory card and free alternative maps, now that nuvi not only lives again, but it works.

True, it's slightly challenging to get favorites saved in an old nuvi because it has to be done using GPS coordinates. But if it's the choice between doing that or using a smartphone nav app that can break at any time, putting in extra effort to save locations doesn't seem like much of a big deal at that point.

Using a 200 series nuvi is truly a back-to-basics navigation experience. No internet, no traffic reporting, no Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi. It's just a GPS receiver that routes. That's it.

In the end, a bunch of people went back to their old nuvi 200's just out of frustration. It was used years ago, then replaced by nav apps, then brought back after more than a decade because modern nav apps keep breaking.

I'm not saying going back to an '08 GPS navigator is the answer to bad phone nav apps, but for some it is.

Published 2025 Apr 22