Where’s Wal-Mart? The Failure of Nokia Maps
The single biggest reason I use a mapping application on my phone is the ability to find something. I’m sitting here at home and I want to find where the nearest Walmart is. Actually, I know where it is, I just want to see if Nokia Maps on my Nokia N95 8GB can find it. After several “not found” message–something not acceptable when really it’s because of some other error–I got the following search result:
I know I’m not near a Walmart, but is Mexico really the nearest one? Ok, so what happens if I add a hyphen and search for Wal-Mart:
Ah, that’s much better. What about Google Maps? Walmart shows:
Apparently, Google lists it as Wal-Mart, but is smart enough to that when I typed Walmart, I actually meant Wal-Mart. I repeated the test with another place I know we need to go soon: Big O Tires. Nokia Maps sent me to Canada!
Meanwhile Google Maps was able to find the nearest Big O Tires:
I could go on, but you get the idea. Only one word can describe this experience: FAIL.
While I’m big on using dogfood (e.g. these pictures are hosted on Share on Ovi), Nokia Maps is one piece of dogfood I can’t bring myself to use. I can only hope my comrades in Nokia fix this problem, and quickly!
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Tags: google maps, gps, nokia, nokia maps Fnord
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Comment by Jared Eldredge
i can’t argue with you. typically, (and annoyingly) i search for a location with google maps, save it as a landmark, exit, open nokia maps, select my landmark, then navigate (drive/walk) to that place.
nokia’s navigation feature is nice, but not perfect. i would probably give that up too if google maps had a similar navigation feature (voice commands don’t matter much, even just a BEEP would be enough to make me look at the screen and say “oh, left, ok”).
-bit
Comment by PhoneBoy
I’ll have to try that out, I didn’t realize you could do swap data between Google Maps and Nokia Maps like that.
Comment by Jared Eldredge
you’ll need the latest and greatest version of google maps for that (if gMaps shows a blue arrow pointing the direction you’re moving, rather than a blue dot, you’ve got it). the feature works well – you can even add a search result as a contact.
Comment by PhoneBoy
I am using that version. Used it on vacation, the direction pointer is cool
Comment by ceedee
Dean Maslic has helpfully provided a web service which allows you to share (pc-based) Google MyMaps with GMaps for Mobile (on, erm, your mobile) — very useful if you’ve got lots of landmarks in different categories. I have different MyMaps for customer locations, truckstops and a fuel bunkering chain, all available on my mobile with just a few clicks.
Sometimes GMfM loads without the kml data but clicking the link from the webpage a second time, the full map is displayed without a problem.
Ffi: http://groups.google.com/group/mymapsmobile
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[...] I’m also not going to ignore the fact the Nokia N96 has some software quality issues and that Nokia Maps is a FAIL experience for [...]