Nokia Ovi Maps Review – Nokia’s Free Navigation Software For Smartphones
Taking a play out of the Google playbook and likely looking to get some kind of foothold in the U.S. smartphone market, Nokia has stepped up and is now offering their Ovi Maps navigation software completely free. It’s like Google Maps Navigation, but for Nokia Smartphones.
It has some nifty features, and the price is hard to beat, but it’s still not as good as paid apps for the iPhone or standalone PND devices.
WIN!
Just like all the best navigation software, your maps are stored locally. That means more accurate routing and (Google, are you listening?) if you lose your data signal, you still have navigation because everything you need is stored locally.
It also has many of the other features you’ve come to expect from PND devices. It displays your current speed, the distance to next turn, and the upcoming street name. Voice directions are also clear and easy to understand.
It also works anywhere in the world (Google Maps Navigation only works in the U.S. ) which means that if you live somewhere other than the United States, you now have a free navigation option.
FAIL!
Just like with Google Maps Navigation, there are some bizarre and glaring omissions (and just because the software free doesn’t give it a free pass – cell phone data plans and smartphones both cost plenty of money so it’s hardly “free”). There is no on screen qwerty keyboard for entering in addresses. It only offers a handwriting recognition system and a texting style numeric keyboard. And while the built in keyboard works just fine, guess what? When you have the unit in the windshield mount, you can’t open up the keyboard.
Just like it’s Google brethren, it has no idea what the speed limit is anywhere and doesn’t offer lane assistance for complicated interchanges (Navigon does an amazing job with this and I’ll admit spoiled me a bit, but I’m okay with being demanding from my GPS software).
Expect it to be on every GPS enabled smartphone from here on out. I made a list below for the phones it’s available on now. Just head to maps.nokia.com to download it.
Available on the following Nokia handsets:
- X6
- N97
- N97 mini
- E72
- E55
- E52
- 6730 classic
- 6710 Navigator
- 5800 XpressMusic
- 5800 Navigation Edition
- 5230
Conclusion
Overall, Ovi Maps is a capable navigation program. With free map updates, no up front cost, no monthly fees, and more importantly, efficient routing; Ovi Maps can take you where you want to go. It’s not MobileNavigator or TomTom for iPhone yet, but if you have a Nokia phone, you definitely wan this.
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“It’s not MobileNavigator or TomTom for iPhone yet”
I did not try Tomtom for iPhone and I tried TomTom 5 on PDA. I prefer Ovi much better.