Nokia Drive for WP Review by Engadget; Deemed Best in Class
Here’s a nice change of pace; rather than reviewing the phone itself someone has finally given the awesome support apps a second glance, and I’m quite sure they’re happy they did. Engadget took the Lumia 900 on a Nation-wide trek and suffice to say the phone did not disappoint, with the wrap-up being:
I can confidently say that Nokia Drive is the best purely offline navigational tool on the market
Check out the review at the source link, it’s a very nice piece which details exactly why Nokia Drive is so awesome, just one piece of information you won’t find in the post, when you search for a place offline (eg: McDonalds) if available the app will also provide you with contact details of the location including phone number and address, pretty sweet if you want to reserve ahead,eh?
*Note: they acknowledge the fact that Nokia Drive’s features have been available on Symbain for a while now, but overall switching to a Symbian phone wasn’t worth the better navigation:
Nokia has been a player. At that time, it was the outfit’s Ovi Maps leading the pack, offering the only legitimate offline solution amongst a legion of ho-hum alternatives that required bits of data to keep you on track. But frankly, there wasn’t a Symbian device in Nokia’s stable that could show up my Nexus One in terms of overall utility, so begrudgingly, I pushed it aside
Check out the full review here:http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/nokia-drive-offline-navigation-review-taking-the-lumia-900-for/
Category: Applications, Nokia, Windows Phone
About the Author (Author Profile)
Heyyo, names Ali- Currently a fourth year Dental Student from Chicago; studying in Jordan. I love all sorts of gadgets almost as much as I love my cookies! (Have: Green Nokia N8, Cyan Lumia 800, Black N9, Stormtrooper White Lumia 900, Black 808 PureView, Red Lumia 920). Follow my twitter handle '@AliQudsi' - no pressure. Thanks.Subscribe
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and this comes as as surprise to no nokia fan , since their mapping software has always been first class .
Excellent. Engadget type of positive wider visibility is what Nokia and Maps need.
Well, that’s actually wrong, there are 3rd-party offerings that are better overall.
In terms of a OOTB/free experience then yes, there’s not much quite like it (except for what’s in S^3/Harmattan).
But that’s not what they’re insinuating here is it….
Engadget fail again, they’re not really technically competent (or they’re for hire?), never have been.
But they carry a huge amount of weight, so this can only be a good thing for WP in general.
WP fan but I can admit that Drive/Maps have a long way to go before they compare to paid apps out there.
I’m not sure why are you suddenly comparing it to paid maps?
Paid maps are quite of niche these days. You rarely see general media covering it, and rightly so because Nokia Maps, Google Maps even as free are already so nice to use and full featured that for 99% anything better is useless, even so if it actually costed.
I’m comparing it because they claim it’s the best off-line navigation tool on the market “PERIOD”.
That’s sheer hyperbole and it should be called out as such…
Paid navigational apps are often exploited by power-users in the android/ios camps who want something better than the built-in experience.
Same for even Symbian, which has had a better built-in experience than the aforementioned for yonks.
There’s been some amazing paid apps for it that are simply better overall (even to this day) compared to anything built-in.
I haven’t looked heavily for alts on WP yet, but I’m sure there’s some there too or coming.
You should see what those Predator drones can do…
Yeah man, that’s useful & insightful input.
I see. So, it’s clear that you don’t understand my extrapolation to your comment.
Or, you did indeed understand and were insulted, hence your sarcastic comment.
Pretty sure I understood, but who could blame me if I didn’t.
It was vague & didn’t display any knowledge or share any new info. on the subject matter at hand.
Seemed more like cynical swipe & or snide remark, on the money?
Well speaking of maps, another upgrade coming with Groupon in it and more.
Nokia Maps is great and I’d much rather have it with me on a road trip than Google Maps.
However compared to iOS’ third party apps like TomTom, Navigon, Sygic, CoPilot, it lacks A TON of features.
You just select a destination, it gives you a A to B route and that’s it, you cannot do anything about it, you cannot adjust the route, cannot play with the route at all like you can with iOS apps.
Here are some things it lacks:
- Search by coordinates – Enter coordinates for your location.
- Navigate from a picture EXIF data
- Multiple route choices – CoPilot, Navigon, Google have this, it’s awesome, displays multiple(shortest, fastest, optimized) routes at once on the map, colour coded and you can pick and choose the one you want.
- Multiple route points/stops
- Contacts navigation
- Copy/Display GPS coordinates – You cannot copy or get GPS coordinates from your current location or any location you want, this is handy when a road does not have a name and you want to tell your friend an exact location, you send GPS coordinates.
And the list goes on and on, also from Nokia Maps S60v3 version, the trip computer is absent, it was a neat little feature that counted how many miles you’ve traveled in total(and current trip separately), how many hours, etc…
EDIT: Also when you swipe over the map when navigation it should go into the route overview/panning mode and not show you the next turn, the next/previous turn display when swiping up and down is a useless feature, when you can freely and quickly pan over the route, you have more control.
More functions doesn’t mean better. All those functions seem completely niche, almost nobody would use them.
The beauty of Nokia drive is its simplicity, ease of use, and perfect for the task at hand.
Thank god they haven’t added those ‘features’ and have kept it simple, clean and functional.
That is why most people think it is the best.
“More functions doesn’t mean better.”
Actually, it does.
Just because you cannot think of a way to use those features, does not make them a niche.
All those features are VERY useful, especially the multiple route choice feature.
Go get a real modern smartphone, you have no clue what you’re talking about.
Cod31337, to nitpick, you’re wrong on the “EDIT” point, where you say swiping goes to next turn
That’s specifically a failing of the old Symbian versions. The N9 version lets you slide and pan around the map, as you’d expect. I presume the Lumia version does as well.
As much as I love Nokia Drive and think it’s one of the best out there, I agree with you that there are some lack features. I use it very often and was annoyed when I could not select an alternate routes.
It is also not integrated with People Hub. When you select an address from your contact it opens Bing Maps instead of Nokia Drive!
Constructive non trolling criticism **rubbing eyes** oh wait its not the real Cod3rror.
Precisely my point before yours.
But, it doesn’t just hold true for iOS as you “seem” to be insinuating.
Do they have another version newer than the 3.0 version I have… because if you compare it to Garmin… Nokia Drive is pretty crappy. I don’t like it one bit. I currently live in Minnesota and street changes that have been in effect for over 2yrs still don’t show on their current maps for my state….
Is there an option to report them?
In terms of features like modifying a route or adding points to a route, Nokia Drive on WP and Symbian can’t compare to dedicated GPS apps like TomTom or Sygic.
But it’s free! That’s the whole point, you get a free navigation solution out of the box with downloadable *offline* maps for most of the world. Google Maps is useless offline and the other navigation apps cover only developed countries like the US and EU.
Nokia’s maps are perfect for travelers because they also cover most of Asia and Africa which the other apps simply don’t offer. 1.3GB for China, 800MB for India, and a few hundred megs for countries in between… you could have most of the world covered in about 8 gigs or so
Mostly agree, my beef was with was how misleading or terribly uninformed the Engadget article is.
Have you read it? It’s a joke, how they can feel comfortable with their integrity is beyond me.
Actually I thought it was pretty fair.
The article’s focus was on navigation apps which can be used offline without having to pay extra for apps or maps. The author said he used Nokia Drive *offline* for most of the trip, something which you cannot do with Google Maps on Android or iOS. You can use third party apps like Tomtom or Sygic but these cost extra for the app itself and for map expansion.
A quote from the article:
“Mind you, I forced the phone to use Drive in offline mode for every single mile outside of the times where I had to temporarily connect to AT&T to search for a specific address.”
That last bit is a bit weird… on both Symbian and WP, Maps/Drive seems to find more POIs when set to online mode than offline. It could be the offline databases on the phone don’t store the latest POI data.
The SGS3 and Galaxy Note sure are tempting as hell but I haven’t made the switch from Symbian because there’s nothing comparable to Nokia Drive/Maps on Android. I use my N8 all the time as a GPS navigator when I travel so I don’t have to pay a dime for data roaming
Nah it’s still patently misleading, it doesn’t make the distinction you are in your post here.
The fact that there ARE much better apps, you just have to be prepared to pay (once-off) for the privilege.
One more cool thing about Nokia Drive: if I’m traveling and I use a local SIM with a data package, I can switch it to online mode and get live traffic updates. The map data is already stored on the phone so only a small amount of traffic data is downloaded.
You get the best of both offline usage and the latest online info.
Yessssssssss bang on
Yes it is nice, but this is not something unique to Nokia Drive.
I don’t think there’s any free/built-in apps that can do it, sure.
Unless HTC’s work with (TomTom IIRC?) has been progressing much more, but even its not completely free last I checked.
i wonder why they took this long to realize that shit….been using Nokia Maps since 2005 on my 6270 as my first unlocked phone ….pathetic it took this long …i thsould have been recongnized from years ago
One problem has always remained with Nokia Maps/Drive…. the routing!
On some trips you might be lucky and it wll pick a decent route, but more often than not it’ll add unecersary time and miles onto your trip, on one of my typical routes it would add 20+ minutes and a lot of extra miles to a (should be) straightfoward 40 minute drive.
I stick with an ageing Sygic app on my E7, far far superior routing and unlike Nokia Maps hardly ever tries to send me off around some roads which barely qualify to be called a such!
Maybe it’s better in cities, but here in the West Country(England) you’re often better off just following roadsigns.