I’ve just installed Maps 2.0 on my Nokia N82. This is mobile Internet at its best and its a big upgrade from the previous version. Apart from some nice UI changes, there’s some nice new features.
Firstly, the very important live search facility has been added. Its easy and it picked up my local restaurants first go. It seems to be puling info from Nokia and not from partner search engines. This is good and bad. Good because it allows them to keep the quality of POI’s high. Bad because POI’s go out of date very quickly. There’s a live traffic update facility. (20 Euro per year with daily and weekly options too) which doesn’t seem to be working for me at the moment but if you look at the settings, it can be used for auto-routing. Having traffic info over the net makes so much more sense than having to but an FM receiver for the existing services. There’s satellite imagery which, again, is limited in the area I’m in right now but I can see how that will advance. There’s a better walking mode and a lot of UI changes which include on-screen info like speed, Kbyte usage ad quick access to view modes when navigating.
Here’s a brief look at Maps2.0 running on the N82.
[Apologies for the Kylie Minogue background. I was listening to the new single ‘Wow’ and ‘I should be so lucky’ auto-queued after it! How embarrassing!]
I plan to get out in the car (or by foot perhaps!) and do some more testing later.
Just imagine what they can do with this in V3.0 – Live user info, friend tracking, live advertising, alerting. I try not to use the expression ‘killer-app’ but I really think that the combination of smartphone, GPS, compass (on the new 6210) maps and live Internet access to POIs and traffic is something amazing. I was using the Raon Digital Everun in the car but it looks like the N82 is going to take over car duties. The N82 will do everything in the car that I did with the Everun. Music, phone, Internet, navigation.
Nokia Maps2 beta is available at Nokia’s betalabs site.
