We’ve made huge strides in the technology category known as location based services (LBS). What once seemed like a fantasy is now commonly found: your mobile device knows where you are down to a few feet on this vast planet and can quickly give you a listing of the nearest coffee shops, gas stations, or office supply stores. The technology holds a tremendous amount of promise in its ability to make intelligent suggestions based on your location and your preferences. Imagine asking your phone to suggest a nearby Italian restaurant with it filtering out the ones that you’ve been to before plus the ones that don’t serve your favorite dish. A more futuristic vision of LBS entails you taking a picture of the facade of a building with your phone, then having your device pull up relevant information about the place such as a phone number, review, or menu (if it’s a restaurant).

When we first heard that Garmin would be doing two mobile devices–the coveted and still delayed G60 and the Windows Mobile-based M20–we knew that they’d feature a heavy dose of LBS. Thanks to a new promotional video for the M20, we now have a better idea on the ways that the device will utilize its GPS radio to do new things. While there’s nothing revolutionary that the M20 brings, it does do some clever tricks.

The functionality that the M20 brings may have been cutting edge one or two years ago, but today, most of these functions can be had from using Google Maps Mobile with a good navigation program like TomTom.

That said, from the video, we can learn a few things about the functionality of the M20:

- The M20 will come with pre-loaded maps and Garmin’s proprietary navigation software

- The navigation software will have a points of interest directory

- A feature called Location Link will allow you to highlight the name of a location (for example “City Hall”) and it will find that location nearest to you

- The navigation software will integrate with your calendar to bring up location info

- The software contains five “connected services”: real-time traffic info, local event directory, fuel price lookup, white pages, and movie times for local theaters

- The M20 uses Ciao which lets you see where your friends are via GPS similar to Latitude on Google Maps. It’s not clear if this works with any GPS-equipped device or just the M20. If the latter, the feature would be pretty much useless

For full specs on the M20, check out PDAdb.net.

(video via: wmpoweruser)