Google Maps 3.3 now supports syncing of Nokia Landmarks and Google Maps favourites between handset and the mighty google cloud. Looks like another nail into the coffin of Nokia Maps?
Opera Mobile 10 Beta 2 for symbian has got Opera Sync and Download manager, but the sweetest thing comes from the fixes to memory management and rendering speed. It was quick on Omnia HD i8910, and it is (subjectively) twice faster now.
I was getting error message from Nokia Map Updater, that compatible phone is not found, until I tried to run old version of Nokia Maps (2.x which comes in v31 of firmware) for the first time. After it has started and created some registry settings and own files on the phone, Nokia Map Updater immediately found my handset and proceeded with installation of Nokia Maps 3.
I am going to spend my vacation in Ukraine, and will go there for two weeks starting from this Thursday, 19.6.
I am going by car, route will be 2000km and will take 2 days driving in each direction. Here are 2 parts of the route.
First part is Riga - Lithuania - Poland. 845km. Plus time lost on Ukrainian border and another 140km in Ukraine to the hotel in Lutsk. I had to plan it in Google Maps. Actual navigation will be with TomTom 6.02 on Nokia N82 (Garmin XT mobile maps as backup).
2nd day will be only 900km. This one was planned in Garmin mapsource. Actual navigation will be by Garmin Mobile XT. (Nokia Maps 2.0 as backup).
There are two options for this day - going through Vinnitsa or going through Zhitomir. Both are same distance and I am trying to obtain more feedback in the excellent (russian speaking) community of autotravellers at AutoUA.
Apart from mentioned programs I still have maps of Ukraine and Ukraine largest cities in YandexMaps cache, SmartcomGPS and of course there is Google Maps mobile and MGMaps, but those require GPRS, which I will only connect when I arrived in Kherson and will buy local SIM card with unlimited GPRS.
The easiest and totally free way to navigate in Moscow is using Yandex Maps. Application is available for WM, Symbian, UIQ and java phones. It is similar to Nokia Maps, you can download map fragments on the go, via GPRS. I used it during my last visit to Moscow and found that it has the best detalization compared to Nokia or TomTom maps. And if you choose to connect via GPRS and update your location data, you will get access to traffic situation too. However, until now there was a catch22 - the people who needs such navigation most, would be ones not willing to use it due to sky-high prices of data roaming. I personally, used Russian SIM for that trip, but it is not something easy to do for a foreigner, or anybody on a short visit. Now, this problem is solved for smartphones (read not for Java phones), because now you can download full Moscow map (60MB streets or 183MB steets+satellite) availablefrom Yandex Mobile Maps website
and put it into predefined directory on your phone. Disclaimer! I have not done it yet, but will try soon.
P.S. While at it, provided you get a local SIM, it is also the easiest way to navigate most other largest Russian/Ukrainian cities, currently, 15 cities available: Москвa, Санкт-Петербург, Киев, Екатеринбург, Краснодар, Нижний Новгород, Новосибирск, Одесса, Орел, Ростов, Рязань, Самара, Тула, Уфа, Челябинск, Татарстан, Крым.
Do not know when this happened, the MyLocation feature of Google Maps, that guesstimates approximate location of the user without use of GPS, but rather, relying on cellular tower location database, is active now. I think I tried it couple of months ago, and it was not active at that time. Now, it still is pretty rough. But it is good for learning locations of nearest cell towers of your operator. After checking my location 3 times, within different rooms of my flat, I learned that I am located between 3 cells and my location indicator will show different points on the map for each room. Nice. Certainly not good for a phone battery life when handset is forced to switch between different cells, trying to find one, which is not as bad as the current one.
Posts
All Comments
