2008/05/24

Nokia maps 2.0 out of beta, still unfriendly

I have used Nokia maps 2.0 since it appeared in beta, along with TomTom, Google maps and Mgmaps. And despite some nice improvements in the latest version, I still see 2 glaring usability screw ups, that make it almost impossible to use it to plan anything more than a trip within one city's borders.
I attached here screenshots from Nokia maps, Google maps and TomTom. They all show the same region of Poland that I want to visit next month. I want to make sure that my trip goes through certain cities and through ring roads rather than through city centers. The first problem with Nokia maps 2.0 begins when you realise that in regional view, you don't get to see any cities or major roads, unlike in Google or TomTom. Ok, I opened Google maps to help me orient in the region, and persisted to find corresponding cities in Nokia maps, adding some waypoints for my 1100km long auto trip from Riga through Lithuania and Poland, to Ukrainian border. And now we get to the next trouble. I guess that after route is calculated, you would like to check it? Huh?
Not so fast.
It will show you route as it looks on the map of Europe, but if you want to see it closer, say on regional level or just an overview of a single town that it goes through, Nokia maps skips that level of zoom and propells you into turn by turn view of the route, magnified to the largest zoom on the street level. Going through my 100+ waypoints in such view, in sequential order (what? Cannot skip those 50 points to see how it went around Bialostok?) drives me mad, especially that in street view you even do not get any clue if you are still in city A, or in city B already. Good that I still have TomTom around.
The third peculiarity of Nokia maps, which is not a deal breaker, but still quite stupid usability choice, is that in order to add a new favorite, you need to open another program (Landmarks) and add your favourite there. So when I wanted to add the place I just drove through, to favourites, had to open Landmarks, that showed my last position 300km from current position, and since I already moved 1km from place to be added, I could not use current location to be added as favourite, but had to browse manually the map to that point. Awkward. Slow. UPDATE: I found that you actually can add landmark in Nokia Maps. When in map view mode, just press central joystick button. Here Nokia Maps employ 3rd menu action button as shall be used commonly in S60 Feature Pack2. This is not so obvious if you are used to FP1.

Unfriendly. Not yet my prime navigation choice.

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