Over the recent years I've owned various Nokias. A N95, a N95 8gb, a N96 and now a 5800. Throughout all these Nokias I've used Nokia Maps. I felt a compulsion to try and see how competent their navigation software was. I also at the same time tried Navigon and TomTom, often because the Nokia Maps application could not be trusted.
I first noticed with the 5800 that postcode searches were now reduced to 4 characters ie PR3 4GH now returns PR3 4 - this inacuracy could be about 1/2 a mile from where you need to be. On all my other Nokias using Nokia Maps the postcode search searched on the full postcode.
I wrote to Nokia and was first informed that the postcode search had always been truncated (it had not) and my second email received the reply that Nokia now only returned the first four characters of the postcode search.
From my experience and by way of a comparison TomTom and Navigon both return full postcodes when searched.
Like a lot of others I have paid for drive and walk for the UK and also traffic subscription. Now as I have to enter the full details of where I want to go I feel that navigation is now rather pointless - you need to know exactly where you are going before entering the details into Nokia Maps - to be shown where to go.
If Nokia now only do offer truncated postcode searches and have no plans to do differently I would strongly advise owners of Nokias with Nokia Maps to not purchase the drive and walk option.
I am very dissapointed that Nokia have taken this approach to Nokia Maps, their maps are provided by Teleatlas and only recently they aquired GMBH (?) to strengthen their navigation arm. Also they are developing Nokia Maps 3 - why bother Nokia - it's an inacurate, unreliable piece of software.
I'm posting this also on the Nokia Discussions thread - I want Nokia to take note and reverse their decision.
Come on Nokia - offer full postcode searches on Nokia Maps - you know it makes sense !
Any thoughts anyone ?