I have three navigation programs that I use on my PC and UMPCs. PC Navigator, Sygic and Autoroute. All three of them have now been made totally redundant by Nokia Maps 2.0 on my N82 smartphone. Its doesn’t quite have the screen information that you’d get by using a UMPC but the fact that it is always with me, net-connected and personal makes it far far more useful. I doubt I will ever go back to a dedicated or PC-based navigation system now.
There are two other features that make it more interesting too. 1) Its small enough to be used for pedestrian navigation. 2) The potential for it to be further enhanced into a social, tracking, weather, traffic and local information tool is incredible.
Nokia have a killer smartphone feature on their hands here and anyone developing for PC or dedicated navigation platforms might want to think twice about continuing.
March 29th, 2008 at 4:54 am
Nokia Maps rocks, but the Nokia Map loader sucks.
Nokia Map Loader alternative: http://nokiamaps.moo.no . Works on any operating system with any browser. No need to install anything, so you can add maps on locked-down computers like at work, in school, internet cafes, or straight from your phones built-in browser.
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