Simply feed the collar strap back as if you are removing it, and your serial number should be next to a small scan code. You can find the serial number on Alpha units on the back of the unit, under the battery.Īs for collars, you can find the serial located under the collar strap on top of the battery box. DriveTrack units will have the serial number under the mount clip on the back. The serial numbers on Alpha 200i units will begin with '6EA' and Alpha 100 units will start with '2PV' or '3YU'. On Alpha handhelds, this will be located under the battery. Using this, we can check the item's purchase date and warranty status, or if out of warranty give a customer discount if the item was purchased from us. In a market where the benchmark company, Apple, has claimed customization and multi-use as its flagship message - 'there's an app for that' - it's time Android phones sold users on a lifestyle and not mere hype.When you call Double U with a broken Garmin item, the first thing we'll ask for is its serial number. The Garminfone may not be a big commercial success, coming as late in the game as it has, but that's not really the point. Garmin, by contrast, has made their customizations additive, not restrictive. Social networking is an awfully big tent, so Motorola narrowed their target customer by narrowing the abilities of the phone - so much, in fact, that it won't let users upgrade to the newest version of Android. But it also comes with lots of AT&T bloatware and too little processing power to run all those widgets at once, which users complain makes the the phone slow and hard to customize. Motorola's tepidly-received 'Motoblur' skin tries awfully hard by using social networking as a vector it puts a bunch of social Web widgets right up front.

This is a worthy way forward for Motorola (MOT), HTC and Samsung, which are struggling to figure out a reason that people should buy their phones - besides the reality that they're locked into a contract that isn't with AT&T (ATT). One example: the Garminfone automatically saves your parking spot when you reach a destination, and helps you navigate back. Garmin's lifestyle-integration is deep, too - not just about designing a flashy home screen (ahem, HTC). (The Droid Incredible, with its 8MP camera, could style itself as a photo-enthusiast phone, but it's too busy looking macho.) It's worth remembering that this was the iPhone's original value proposition: it did the exact same thing by combining a music player and phone. In fact, the Garminfone is not so much phone as much as a GPS device that tries to remove redundancy in its users' lives (since presumably no one needs a standalone GPS and a smartphone with GPS). This is simply a phone for people who drive a lot.

Garmin hasn't taken any shortcuts by slicing by age, gender or stereotype.

(Other Android phones give you a small grid of apps, or a widget-based dashboard.) This thing is clearly meant for users who really value navigation and calling, but couldn't care less about having Gen-Y tools like Shazam, Loopt or Facebook within one-touch reach. The Garminfone has a very specific user in mind note that the opening screen presents calling, messaging and navigation as the only one-touch options. Garmin's strategy shows the rest of Android phone-makers how to focus in on a target user without narrowing its appeal.

But you'd never know it from watching the commercials, which only appeal to the male half of the smartphone market. The problem is that the Droid could do just fine for female users - just like any Android phone. Unsurprisingly, AdMob statistics show that while Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM) were courting both genders equally, Android has been busy building up a 73% male user base.

Garmin Serial Number Lookup