It's not every day that you get direct feedback from the team behind a major manufacturer's software project. Following on from my Maps 2.0 preview, Nokia got in touch, answering some of my criticisms and giving more information about the future of the product. What's going to be added next to Maps, how to plan routes for free, why the satellite images aren't quite there yet, integration with Location Tagger and a future web-based map sync tool, it's all covered.
Read on in the full article.
I think this sort of communication is very encouraging and a good sign for the future.
I hope other people at Nokia are watching this (and learn from it). Great to see this kind of positive two conversation. Hopefully someone will buy the Maps team a beer at the next Ovi team meeting 😊
I got the beta on my E90 and on the internal screen, the buttons at the right side of the screen that show e.g. options and close are wrongly placed
What I mean is that when you want to go to the options, you click on options but nokia maps closes, when you click on close, the options menu appears...
I hope they fix that bug fast.
Until the GPS receivers in Nokia's handsets are better routing with Maps or any other app using the built-in receiver is a novelty feature for occasional use.
My N95 will often lose the signal a crucial moment during a car journey, often in a built-up area when the GPS signal is in the shadow of a building. A dedicated Tomtom unit with a 20 channel 3 receiver does not have the same problem.
I'd say the GPS are fine in all the recent devices - N95 8GB, N82 etc. I'd agree the N95 classic was bad though.
Have the gps units changed at all from the n95 classic? I thought all nokia phones had the same gps units in them.
It's the same receiver in all current Nokia handsets.
A dedicated TOMTOM units is exactly what you wrote, a "dedicated" units that is designed to be installed into a car. With the N95 (or other similar devices) you have an all in one that is very useful in cases like travels for job or other activities. For example, I used it during trekking and cross country skiing sessions. Anyway, I used also very often my N95 as a car navigator device without great problems and I am very satisfied. Consider that I my external BT sirf star III receiver is at present collecting dust.
I hope it would be possible to compose a route through several points (e.g. not only navigate to, but navigate to X, through points A, B and C, etc.)
Nokia have used the same GPS chip in all the current models of phones - N95, N95 8Gb, 6110, N82. I dont know about the new models coming out however.
But suffice to say, the current GPS chip is good enough. I have found that there seems to be 2 main problems with them, one N95 specific:
Often the AGPS server address isnt correct, sometimes it has odd addresses which seem to relate to the network the phone is on.
The proper address (for ANY network) should be: supl.nokia.com
And in N95s, it appears theres a problem with the arials. On some units, people have complained about not getting a lock no matter what they do, and others that it loses it too easy.
Some have taken them apart, and fiddled with the arial which has improved it immensely. I wouldnt recommend this to most, but its obvious theres some issues with *some* N95s.
In my 6110, GPS is certainly not a 'novelty' and gets a lot of use.
>A dedicated TOMTOM units is exactly what you wrote, a "dedicated" units that is designed to be installed into a car
The point is, if I am paying for a GPS service it must work. Flawlessly.
The current incarnation of the GPS unit and the Maps software is great for free, but a huge number of users will not be getting the level of functionality that they would expect when paying for routing/guidance.
Glad your GPS works, you should have a look around the forums and find out just how many people have problems...
Unregistered wrote: The point is, if I am paying for a GPS service it must work. Flawlessly.The current incarnation of the GPS unit and the Maps software is great for free, but a huge number of users will not be getting the level of functionality that they would expect when paying for routing/guidance.
Glad your GPS works, you should have a look around the forums and find out just how many people have problems...
No gps is flawless, even tomtom devices.
In comparision to how many people have N95s, the people with problems is an extremely small number.
Personally the maps routing and instructions (first version, not on about the beta) isnt good enough for me, so I have tried other satnav packages.
They all work, to varying degrees, but basically, it will get you there.
And you can get tomtom on an N95. Yes, you have to use a seperate BT reciever, but thats tomtoms fault not nokias. Tomtom are obviously now not doing a fix on purpose, they long ago (Febuary last year) gave up on symbian.
Using Garmin, and previously navigon, I could navigate to anywhere.
Nokia maps is being overhauled to be as effective at navigating as one of those, and possibly (dare I say it?) as good as tomtom.
People say its just a phone and it will never be as good as a dedicated device, but why not?
Touchscreen and screensize aside, theres absolutly no reason why it cant be as good. Powerful processors, decent amounts of ram means phones have the same potential as any dedicated device.
The more connectivity options only enhances this.
Its a shame that satnav makers have widely given only a token effort at symbian packages. Compare any dedicated device from navigon, copilot, garmin and tomtom and you can see the difference. Its not through limitation of the device, but more through laziness. The lane assistant in navigon is a prime example. They even said on the website it was on the symbian version, and support also said this, but it isnt. And no custom POI either, which the dedicated devices have. And phones are perfectly capable of having this, on other programs they do.
With the sudden surge in GPS enabled phones I predict much more interest in this area. Either that or isolation, as per tomtoms method.
Unregistered wrote:It's the same receiver in all current Nokia handsets.
Thel aerial matters as much as the receiver (in phones anyway), as does having a positioning server (A-GPS). This is what has changed in the recent phone and that's why they are a lot better.
Clearly there is a difference of opinion of what is good enough. I think the Nokia Maps, especially with version 2.0, is good enough. There's room for improvement of course, but its the way of the future. Ultimately the convenience of having everything in one device will win out for the majority of people (there will, of course, be those who still have stand alone).
I think Rafe's comment immediately above about things being good enough could apply equally to any converged feature.
People who are seriously into photography will always use a separate camera, and the same will hold true for GPS, the separates will always be better.
The group that drives convergence are people who aren't that serious about a particular feature but who find it convenient to have that feature, eg. they aren't serious photographers, but they often use their phone camera because it's there.
The only way the current SIRF-2 GPS receivers in Nokia's handsets will ever offer good enough performance in a vehicle is with an external aerial. Why Nokia didn't add an external aerial socket (hey they could have charged ���s for an official Nokia accessory) is a mystery.
Unregistered wrote:The only way the current SIRF-2 GPS receivers in Nokia's handsets will ever offer good enough performance in a vehicle is with an external aerial. Why Nokia didn't add an external aerial socket (hey they could have charged ���s for an official Nokia accessory) is a mystery.
Well I use it just fine in a car, and so do loads of others. Guess you had a bad experience which has put you off which is a shame.
>The point is, if I am paying for a GPS service it must work. Flawlessly�
Forums are a very useful way to learn thing and to compare opinions. But forums are also full of phrases as �while I was using Maps, the device downloaded data for many KB� or �I have to keep my device topsy-turvy to obtain a GPS signal�. So you can not base your opinion only on forums. I have a N95 that works very well. One of my friends has the same model and he is also satisfied. We both use GPS and WiFi functions (try and read forums about this last point!) and we both are very happy. Anyway, my suggestion is to try another GPS software. My friend use Garmin Mobile XT and he says this has very good performances if compared with NokiaMaps.
As a cheaper alternative, you could also buy an external BT GPS that surely has better performance than the internal GPS.