Nokia's free Smart2Go maps and routing service for S60 and Windows Mobile smartphones has finally gone live, only 3 days late and it would be churlish to complain too much. There will be a review along fairly shortly, I'd expect, once any of the AAS team get a chance to draw breath...
Read on in the full article.
In the suported phones list only series 60 3rd edition phone are listed, if i download the N73 version will it work on my 6680?
No
will it work with the SE P990i?
Erm .. will Nokia's free utility work on a Sony Ericsson phone not running Nokia's S60 OS? I'm guessing not, eh 😉
Just got it and installed it on my E61. The application itself works OK OTA, if a little slowly. Getting maps onto it via a USB connection takes forever. I don't know if the problem is with Nokia's servers being hammered, or some glitch with the Map Loader application (e.g. loading approx. 55Mb of maps on a 2Gb microSD card will take about 40 minutes).
Also, it looks like the City Guides and some of the navigation/route planning features are add-ons that need to be purchased.
I downloaded England map (90mb) in 15mins so it must have been the servers
vinjini wrote:will it work with the SE P990i?
5 hours to download 49 mb!!
Application doesn't seem to work OK on my N93. It is very slow and maps are distorted. Roads start and stop randomly and for example Nokia HQ seems to be unreachable by car.
Looks like site is down... I guess they couldn't handle the load.
installed couple of times, always missing some parts of maps...seems like real beta
Well, I tried downloading all 4 UK maps last night (about 125MB) and it took well over an hour. Once finished (bar reached 100%) the MapLoader app froze, with the timer shown Time Remaining in a minus figure. The app on the phone then didn't seem to work properly. So I decided to uninstall the maps using the function in MapLoader. This again took an age but ultimately was successful. I then tried to download and re-install the mapsusing both the Mass Storage setting on my N73 and also with the card in my PC card reader, and on both occasions, the download stayed at 0.0% and gave me some ridiculous Time Remaining as 2000+ hours !!
I guess servers were taking a bit of a hit last night so I will give it till the weekend maybe and see how I get on there.
But to be perfectly honest, as others have said, TomTom takes a hell of a lot of beating and as yet, I have seen nothing to topple it from the top spot.
I downloaded the maps ok, took about an hour.
Works fine for me on an N80.
Amusingly enough though I set up a route to my parents house setting the transport option to go 'on foot' it planned the route ok but when I went to view a simulation of the route it went a different way and wanted me to walk down the A3M motorway.
Not a good as tomtom but still a nice app for a freebie, ideal for walking around towns etc - as long as you stay of the motorway that is !!
Oh and like latest TomTom maps the maps are out of date, they still show a major roundabout at the junction of the A27/A3/M275 in Portsmouth, which in reality was removed several years ago and replaced with an american style mega junction.
I signed up for a month's worth of navigation, for the purposes of an AAS full review....
First impressions are good, but that there are data and app problems that need fixing. No sound on my N93, a few mis-handled keystrokes etc.
I wonder if they'll notify anyone when new versions go live?
Incidentally, you don't need data use when using Nokia Maps - I kept it disabled and was able to do full navigation. I had loaded in the whole of the UK using MapLoader.
Or maybe the voices are supposed to come down over a data link? Shudder. Anyone know, or have voices?
Steve
when you choose spoken language it downloads voices
Has anyone got the city guides working? When I select it it just closes the app. However, I can select the other 'Extra' okay, the 'Add navigation'
FWIW I'm using an N73 (latest 3UK firmware)
Yup, voices are now working after a 1MB or so download 8-)
Terrible routing though, I just got sent on a 2 mile detour when there was a straight 1/2 mile road to get to the same destination.
I guess it's all still in beta etc. I've reported some of my issues.
Steve
I gave up waiting for the voice prompts to download on my phone (I have an N73, so cant get it over WiFi using an access point at home like Steve can). Who knows how much of my paid up front data tarrif allowance I've used on this!
It seems a bit short sighted to let you download the maps to a PC but not the voice prompts....
And even without the navigation option, I can get the phone app to plan a route... so what do you get extra with the navigation option?
Andy.
As far as I can tell, the free version gives you text route instructions, followed by tracking progress on a map - the paid version gives you on-screen turn instructions plus voice prompts. I've got Smart2Go now on two devices, one paid up and one without, and I'll do more tests in the coming weekend.
And yes, Wi-Fi does help enormously for this sort of one-off bulky download. And I've no idea why the voices aren't part of the MapLoader....
Steve
Steve
you can plan route and go simulation mode with voice promts. GPS is only needed for map moving... and finally it seems I managed to load all map data with maploader earlier there was alwas missing some parts...
This is a very strange product. They are giving away kind of the middle bit of a satnav system.
Are they trying to lure the unconverted to a subscription service, or are they trying to steal market share from Garmin, Tomtom etc.?
Not that I'm complaining about free maps on my phone that I don't need a data connection to use out-and-about (damn you googlemaps!) 😉
I could not find E50 in the list of supported phones. When NOKIA says it's supported on S60 3rd Edition, shouldn't this include E50 also?????
It should, unless there's some issue/change/difference in E50 that makes it not work. However, if you download for, say N73 and try, it'll probably work.
Ok, I have three times now tried downloading the 4 UK maps (England, Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland) and on every occasion, the download takes a few hours and when the progress meter reaches 100%, the download progress continues, it doesn't stop and the time remaining goes into minus figures. The only way to stop this is to cancel the download.
Once this has been done, my memory card shows up as full, even though there was about 250MB free and the 4 maps totalled 125MB approx. The phone then becomes almost unusable because it is continuously popping up a "Memory Low" message
The only way to rectify the situation is to use the "Remove Maps" feature of MapLoader.
This renders the whole application pointless.
Is anyone else experiencing issues like this ?
I am running a Nokia N73 ME on firmware V 3.0705.1.0.31.
Hello,
Could you write where are the voices saved (into MMC with map data or phone memory)? What is the format of voices (wav, mp3, amr, ...)?
Are the voices loud enough in the cars with diesel engines?
I was thinking why they haven't made some sis files with 'voice packs'...
Best Regards,
jack
I found that on N93 'Search by address' option always results in 'Nothing found' (no matter as many fields you fill in) - this relates to Polish maps which were installed in the phone without problems. Any clues?
Best Regards,
jack
Like others I took ages to download England and a bit of France -despite a fast broadband connection.
Once on my E70 I was impressed. I don't use SatNav as I find it distracting but having the maps on the phone to allow route checking and address finding offline is absolutely fantastic - and free.
I love it.
I have a newly - OS upgraded Nokia N73, on the '3' network in Sydney, Australia.
Here's my experience with it all.
Original install onto the N73 was easy and worked first time - even with the N73 still running a 2.x version of its OS. Problem was when I went to upgrade (ie: pay) for the version with navigation- it would crash. Thus, a trip over to the nokia care centre in Chatswood solved it.
The maps download quickly and reliably from the data connection - but of course, I'd rather have them on the mmc memory chip. Well, bugger me if nokia decided that they wern't gonna give mac users a go!! I had to drive 50 minutes away to my closest buddy with a PC, to get him to download the Australian maps.
And there was the next problem - Nokia's hoplessly inefficient file server. One could forgive the maploader apps bug (being it's still in beta), but really - to wait 6 hrs for a 25 meg download (approx...) and have the maploader app CRASH at the 92% mark? Not stoked.
Tomorrow i'm off to Japan, and had hoped to carry maps with me. Not gonna happen, at least until I can tee up Me, My phone (which must be in not-taking-calls mode for the duration of the download), and my PC buddy - all when Nokias IT guy get the server working at a reasonable speed.
So has anyone here successfully downloaded the Aust maps?
Kez
I am not convinced it is the file server end that is so slow. I had similar problems with Maploader (trying to download 18.5MB China map):
1st attempt: Estimated at 2 hours but kept increasing estimate - cancelled and moved to better WiFi point
2nd attempt: Estimated 2000 hrs. - Cancelled
3rd attempt: Estimated 2 hours but slowed down and had to cancel.
Found device memory card was full and had to use MapLoader to "Clear all maps on device" even though the maps are not listed, not visible(?) on device, and CHKDSK doesn't list any problems. Doing this clearing took a long time = > 30 mins.
4th attempt: (From home). It took maybe 6 hours to get to "100%" and the time kept counting into negative time... .I let it run another 5.5 hours before aborting it.
Again the memory card is allegedly full... but MapLoader 'hangs' at clearing the card (just shows "Maps are being deleted..."😉 - even after several hours. I don't know if it is clearing the card or doing nothing. I am wondering if the communication between PC and the N80 via MapLoader is extremely slow for some reason. It could be the root problem also explaining the slow downloads?
Does anyone know how I can clear the card to try downloading the maps again?