Burning Lemons

Continuing in our series of uncalled for software reviews I’ve decided to have a stab at the latest version of Nokia’s mapping software. Nokia Maps is probably the most used phone-navigation solution in the world (Google Maps doesn’t count as it doesn’t do turn by turn) so any new development is hugely important as it will eventually show up on millions of handsets.
The first Beta of NM3 was a bit of a disaster partly because it came out before it was really ready (even with Betas if you’re going to make them public you should probably ensure their not going to brick hardware) in order to fit with Nokia’s Nokia World event in Barcelona (now do you see why Apple dumped Macworld?).

The big new feature here is Maps on Ovi yet another arm to Nokia’s nice but underused onlne offering. Unfortunately because it relies on a propriotary plugin the software currently only works in Firefox and IE on Windows XP and Vista although a version for Mac OS X is being developed. The software allows users to plan routes at home and then sycronise them to their phone which saves a lot of keypad bashing on n-series handsets all of which currently come with T9 numeric keypads. The software is like a prettier version of Google maps doing lots of lovely 3D things as well as all the usual stuff. However if you don’t use Nokia Maps don’t bother as their doesn’t seem to be any way to print out or otherwise use the routes that you plan.

Moving on to the software itself. Scrolling around maps looking for locations is now a lot smoother than in previous editions of the software. The maps now come with fairly crappy looking visualisations of well known landmarks (Tower Bridge, The Eiffel Tower and of course The Nokia HQ building) which while cheap looking would probably be a bit of a godsend in a big, unfamiliar city.

The navigation has also been enhanced and certainly from my testing seems to demand fewer u-turns and sudden crossings of 8-way intersections. The maps also seem to have been upgraded as well and now (in my area at least) reflect the world as it was in about September 2008.

Nokia Maps 3 is available from http://betalabs.nokia.com for free although navigation and traffic info is extra. Remember the software is a beta and if you’re not prepared to run in to a few problems stick with version 2 for the moment.

Maps on Ovi can be downloaded by pointing a Windows installation of Internet Explorer 6 or 7 or Firefox 2 or 3 to http://maps.ovi.com

Final Rating: 8/10

The good: Faster startup, smoother movements and more sensible routing

The bad: Prone to the odd crash - but it is a Beta

The ugly: Maps on Ovi requires propriotary plugin and only works in Windows