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Nokia Drive on my Nokia Lumia 800 trouncing dedicated Sat Nav (TomTom)

| February 2, 2012 | 36 Replies
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Yesterday I had a 7-7 day of hospital placement followed by GP visits to get some patient contact.

In the afternoon, 6 pairs were sent off to various GPs in Blackburn, an area unfamiliar to us all and hence our minibus and their satnav.

I took out Nokia Drive just to see how far these places were, just typing out the post code and bam. Processed done. What was interesting to see around the second pair is that we missed one of the GP places. I was sure the driver knew where they were going so I just ignored it…Nokia Drive kept saying, “U-turn” but we kept on going further and further until it seemed quite evident by the driver’s reaction that we were lost and her ‘Machine’ was not working as she asked us to see if the house numbers was going up or down.

So I brought up Nokia Drive, showed the destination and it spoke clearly and loudly the instructions. Lo and behold with doubts that a phone could do better than a dedicated Sat Nav, it proudly said, “you have reached your destination” right outside the correct GP that the TomTom had missed earlier.

The driver notes that her TomTom doesn’t normally go awry, working 90% of the time. I note, true – but this one’s Nokia Drive.

I went back to my seat thinking it was just a little blip by the TomTom device. No. We kept getting lost. We ended up 2 miles away from to an industrial site that was clearly not a GP. Out comes Nokia Drive again, driver still a little doubtful, BAM. “You have reached your destination”. I was surprised how quickly that Nokia Drive had calculated several different routes in the time the TomTom was still ‘calculating’. I didn’t even recognize that as a process.

I’m sure Nokia Drive would have been the same amazing performance on the N9 or Nokia Maps on N8. The GPS lock was superb, absolutely superb. Quick to lock and kept the lock, fast to find locations and produce a route. No one else had Sat Nav on their phones, and one guy that did said his battery was low. In fact, the last pair were kinda scared that they would get lost as I was in a pair that would leave before them. The Driver even joked that I might have to leave my phone with her.

In all, thanks to the Uni for picking the most random and remote GP places from each other to find. Not quite sure where we might have ended up if it weren’t for Nokia Drive. I really hadn’t expected it to outperform a dedicated GPS satnav unit. I do wish though that it was better integrated into phone searches, i.e. the craptastic Bing Maps is hidden away (with its taptitap navigation) instead Nokia Drive when using the search button to find places. Oh, I think with the few Nokia Drive updates on the Lumia it was able to handle being multitasked. The first time I tried it it would have to reload and my navigation disappeared. This time it just continues navigation – great when needing to use the web to check the address on the printed sheets was the correct one for that GP.

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Category: Nokia, Windows Phone

About the Author ()

Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and  Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.com