HERE Drive & HERE Drive+ Differences Explained (Updated 3/12)

There was a lot of confusion regarding the type of navigation experience included in the Lumia 720 and 520 from our last post; so we reached out to the Nokia HERE maps guru, Pino requesting a bit of clarification. So here are the gritty details about the two and what it all means.

Hi Ali, as promised I have some answers for you.

So, first of all the only difference between HERE Drive and HERE Drive+ is the regional or global license. HERE Drive+ is providing voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation in almost 100 countries, while HERE Drive only in one country or region.

Let me give you few examples: US is a stand-alone country in this model, Canada too, but UK is in the same region as Ireland; Spain, Portugal and Andorra are one region; Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Lichtenstein another region and so on. In the specific case of Jordan, you would get the driving license only for your country.

The license selection is done automatically the first time you launch HERE Drive and it’s based on the SIM card in the smartphone. Without SIM card, HERE Drive won’t start. Let’s say you buy a Nokia Lumia 520 in Spain and put a Jordan SIM card in it, you will get the HERE Drive license for Jordan.

Some more remarks:

• Although the car navigation license is for a specific country/region in HERE Drive, you can still download maps for the whole world to use e.g. in HERE Maps or 3rd party apps, you can still have walk navigation everywhere in HERE Maps, etc.

• When HERE Drive/HERE Drive+ will get out of beta, it will be possible to upgrade from HERE Drive to HERE Drive+

• As an overview, HERE Drive (with country/regional license) is available for Nokia Lumia 520, Nokia Lumia 720 and non-Nokia WP8 smartphones

The major point here being that the location you purchase the actual phone in isn’t an issue (relax online shoppers); as the region is set by the SIM card in the phone. Hopefully this made it a bit clearer to some of our readers.

Update (3/12):

A lot of our readers still had some more questions, so Pino was kind enough to comment down below regarding the whole upgrading from Drive to Drive+ situation, which should be a very minimal fee:

Pino says:

March 12, 2013 at 5:51 pm  (Edit)

Hi everyone,
I see a lot of follow-up questions and I’m more than happy to answer to all them too.
– We didn’t announce any further detail on how to upgrade from HERE Drive to HERE Drive+, please bear it with us, you will get all details soon, including the price.
– We believe that HERE Drive, with its global reach (around 100 countries) and robust true offline capabilities (to know more, read http://nokia.ly/Y2sIzt) its unmatched by any competitive offering. The regional license is covering 90% of the use cases. The price you pay to upgrade to HERE Drive+ is going to be less than any roaming cost you will ever encounter when leaving your home country and searching for a place on any competitive free offering.
– Keep in mind that all our smartphones are a unique set of features, design and services. On Nokia Lumia 520 and Nokia Lumia 720 you will get HERE Drive. If the regional license isn’t enough for you, you can upgrade or buy any of our other smartphones that offer global license out of the box

Category: Applications, Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone