A Tail of two journeys

9 replies · 2,162 views · Started 05 November 2009

riverboat 05 Nov 2009, 10:25

I went to see my friend in her new house the other day. I live on the West side of Watford and she lives in Bletchley.

The M25 was shut, and so to avoid all the traffic, i went the country route, and then along the A4146 near Hemel Hempstead.

It was raining very lightly and i was doing about 50mph

This was my first experiment with the maps/satnav side of the N97.

I have the Maps 3.03 from the Nokia Beta Labs website, which i think overall is much more user friendly. I think this is the latest map app available.

I had my music player running through the FM transmitter, and nothing else to my knowledge, although i do have the Facebook app on my homepage.

Then i started maps, no guidance just maps to see how accurate it was.

For the first ten minutes or so it performed lovely and was accurate to about five metere. This wasn't scientific, just measured by the proximity to side roads.

However, at some point the maps app seeemed to lose it's way and despite the signal strength having a good five bars, the screens seemed to swing about wildly, and the little dot with the arrow kept appearing in the corner pointing to my position, ranging anywhere between a few hundred yards and up to two miles away.

It was just awful, the jumping on the screen was mad, it was just all over the place, and wouldn't settle down.

I turned mine off and my Hubby next to me got a perfect signal, and his maps was spot on with no problems.

I restarted the phone when we got there and set it up for coming home.

Same road same speed, same rain, and it behaved perfect, with only a bit of swaying of course by a few meters or so on M25. Although i didn't have the music or FM transmiter running this time.

I will say the faster i was going the more jerky the maps were, pusing me forward in jumps, not smoothly. (this only really happened on the motorway)

So i don't understand what went wrong the first time.

The only thing i can think of is that the little icon that tells you how much data you have / are downloading was showing nil on the way there, so i concluded that the 3g connection must have been being used by something else on my outbound journey and not on the way back.

Just to clear up my confusion, am i right in thinking the N97 has the whole of the UK actually stored on the phone, and the 3g connection is just used to aid positoning?

rdcinhou 05 Nov 2009, 10:32

I too have noticed the jerkiness and "wild" rotations of Maps 3 while driving.

As for whether your N97 has the "whole of the UK" on the device..it is dependent upon you using Nokia Map Loader to install the full UK map. If you didn't, then it is downloading it piece-by-piece when and if Maps needs it.

Back to the performance issues..

I am beginning to wonder....are we trying to make the N97 do too much simultaneously?

That is, does running Facebook, Accuweather, MfE and Messaging live in the background on the home screen cause Maps to have too large an interval between processing the GPS signal and then updating the display?

For those of you whose GPS seems to be working so flawlessly, can you tell us if you have live apps running at the same time or not?

riverboat 05 Nov 2009, 10:54

Well thats the funny thing, if i connect to Pc suite maps loader then it tells me i have an out of date map, and installs the older one! not the one from the Beta labs, and i prefer that one as everthing is easy to find.

dez_borders 05 Nov 2009, 11:50

rdcinhou wrote:
For those of you whose GPS seems to be working so flawlessly, can you tell us if you have live apps running at the same time or not?

All GPS apps need a fair amount of CPU resources, to calculate locations & navigation routes, then draw maps etc. It's worse on the 5800XM and N97 as the screen resolution is higher.
I usually put the home screen into Content to Offline mode before starting GPS, and as you wont be looking at the home-screen during navigation you lose nothing.
It's also worth-while rebooting the device to make sure as much RAM as possible is free when you launch the GPS app.
In my experience, occasional GPS-lock instability/signal drop-out always seems to disappear after a reboot (on many of Nokia's N Series handsets).

ironass 05 Nov 2009, 12:38

riverboat wrote:
Just to clear up my confusion, am i right in thinking the N97 has the whole of the UK actually stored on the phone, and the 3g connection is just used to aid positoning?

When you first use Maps on your phone a limited map of the surrounding area is downloaded to the phone.

You then have to use Map Loader to then download the full map of the country you need. If you don't, then maps will download OTA any maps it needs for navigation as you go. This may explain why it behaved better coming back than going there.

Hope this helps.

ironass 05 Nov 2009, 12:41

riverboat wrote:Well thats the funny thing, if i connect to Pc suite maps loader then it tells me i have an out of date map, and installs the older one! not the one from the Beta labs, and i prefer that one as everthing is easy to find.

As you are using the Ovi Maps beta v3.03 Maps prog on your handset then the OTA map you initially downloaded, which is for the older built-in Map prog, need to be updated.

Just a thought... are you confusing the Maps operating prog version (3.03 in your case) with the map data version (the actual maps themselves)?

Ovi Map app v3.03
Nokia Map Loader v3.0.28.0
Nokia Map version v0.1.22.103

riverboat 05 Nov 2009, 16:07

To be honest, i'm totally confused by your questions!😃

I have no bloody idea what i've got.

V3.03 09wk35
Map Version 0.1.22.103

If that helps!

i know that on the map program i'm running, it has a nice fancy menu.

Much nicer than the maps app that i had on my phone when i debranded to V2

I got my map stuff fom here

http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/ovi-maps

If you follow the link, the page you should land on has a few photos on the side, have a click on these and you will see what i mean.

Now when i connect to PC suite and the map loader thing, it tells me i have an outdated version of Maps and puts on the one that you guys are running, but the screens and the program in general is far less intuitive.

So it seems i can't load on the maps without installing the "older" version of the Map application.

Or is there a way?

ironass 05 Nov 2009, 16:46

OK...

Ovi Maps beta 3.03 is the prog that gives you the nice menu's that you like. This is a phone application that provides that and can be downloaded from, as you pointed out, here:-

http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/ovi-maps

As you say you are running Nokia PC Suite you will need to download the Nokia Map Loader prog, as unlike Ovi Suite which has it intergrated, Nokia PC Suite 7.1.30.9 asks you to download Nokia Map Loader to enable you to transfer maps via your PC to phone.
This Nokia Map Loader v3.0.28.0 can be downloaded here:-

http://europe.nokia.com/explore-services/ovi-maps/downloads-and-services#download

Then you can connect your phone to your computer and select the maps you wish to put on your phone and store on E: (Mass Memory) or F: (Memory Card)drive so that they are ready to use and not downloaded over the air as you go, thus incurring data charges and, as you found, causing an inaccurate fix.

Hope this explains everything.

Good luck. 😊

riverboat 05 Nov 2009, 19:04

Okay, i'll have a go now and see what happens!

riverboat 05 Nov 2009, 19:52

Excellent. Thanks very much for that, i downloaded and installed the Map Loader program, and installed the maps of the Uk. I'm going away for a few days tomorrow in my camper van, and i'll see how it goes.