Nokia Maps Beta

I was able to download the Nokia Maps beta for my N95 yesterday before it was removed from the Smart2Go site which makes me a bit lucky and probably a bit crazy to have installed it, but so far so good. In general, I’ve found GPS connectivity to be much quicker which is excellent! The maps have been updated as well and as you can see in the screenshot below, there’s even a nice set of clouds in the sky over the ocean. No moon or stars at night that I’ve seen …

My initial testing has been a the beach and even took the N95 for a spin on the bay, which is where I snapped these screenshots.

I found a few adjustments in the UI. You can now see the scale of the map, the amount of data transferred and the quality of your connection in what I’ll call the data bar on the bottom of the screen. This threw me at first though I actually like having the info. It took me a few minutes to find how a few keyboard shotcuts had changed that I use regularly. First, In order to have the map snap to your GPS position (if you’ve been moving around the area) you now press 0 (Zero). In order to switch from 2D to 3D to have to go into the menu for Map Options… this used to be a simple 0 (Zero) away.

In the car, the system still will only let North stay up so when you are driving south the map moves up screen. I prefer to have my heading be the top of the screen personally and hope that eventually that’s a setting we can adjust for ourselves.

All in all, I like what I see and am happy that I’ve yet to see any issues — especially since the installer for my device was pulled.

Technorati Tags: GPS, N-Series, N95, Navigation, smart2go