Free!
In a pretty important piece of news, Nokia made all their Ovi Maps services free of charge today. Imagine all the fuss around Google Maps Navigation. Now imagine that for around 20 million phones (none of this Droid/Nexus One only shenanigans), all over the world (none of this US only shenanigans), with preloadable maps (none of this data connection requirement even when roaming shenanigans). This is huge.
But of course, people don’t come to this place to read news (hahaha), so here’s my impressions of the new app. (labled v3.03 10wk01 b05 MW on the about dialog, 3.03 build 246 on the .sis (lol version numbers) there was a old 3.03 labled 3.1 for press purposes, too)
Browsing around
- The brought back Browse categories after not having a way to access them on Maps 3.01
- You can browse around by looking at the map, but if you accidentally go back to the main menu (the first picture on this post), there wasn’t a way to go back to where you were in the map on 3.01. Now you can just tap “Find places” then tap the Map softkey, or the map area to return to it.
- I don’t know if this is new for 3.03 or 3.01, but there is now a (British) English voice that reads street names (“Turn left at Main Street” instead of just “Turn left”). That was a common complaint people had in comparison with other navigation apps. Glad Ovi Maps finally has it now.
- Lifecasting (posting location to Facebook) isn’t N97 only anymore. Didn’t work here though, kept refusing my Facebook credentials for some reason.
I tested the street name reading today, just to check it, and it did pronounce most names correctly, though it screwed up on Napier Ave (it’s nay-pier)
Oh, and of course it would be much better just to have a “View map” icon on the main menu, as pretty much all dedicated sat navs have, but oh well. (<-do this Nokia)
Oh hey, Ovi Maps is now free (also new 3.03 build)
Free!
In a pretty important piece of news, Nokia made all their Ovi Maps services free of charge today. Imagine all the fuss around Google Maps Navigation. Now imagine that for around 20 million phones (none of this Droid/Nexus One only shenanigans), all over the world (none of this US only shenanigans), with preloadable maps (none of this data connection requirement even when roaming shenanigans). This is huge.
But of course, people don’t come to this place to read news (hahaha), so here’s my impressions of the new app. (labled v3.03 10wk01 b05 MW on the about dialog, 3.03 build 246 on the .sis (lol version numbers) there was a old 3.03 labled 3.1 for press purposes, too)
Browsing around
I tested the street name reading today, just to check it, and it did pronounce most names correctly, though it screwed up on Napier Ave (it’s nay-pier)
Oh, and of course it would be much better just to have a “View map” icon on the main menu, as pretty much all dedicated sat navs have, but oh well. (<-do this Nokia)