News · 21 Nov 2011 · MTW Editorial Team
I’m guessing many of you have been wondering why I recently said that Nokia Drive on windows Phone was far inferior to Google Navigation on Android. Well, simply because it’s an undeniable fact. The only thing that Nokia Drive currently has over Google Navigation is the Offline maps but even this is render useless simply because the application currently requires an active data connection to do the routing calculation (Nokia has recently sated that they will “fix” this in a future version..). Everything else is simply superior on Google Navigation or even most of the other GPS navigation offerings out there. Here’s a list of what’s currently missing in Nokia Drive:
– No remaining time until arrival displayed during navigation (it’s only noted during 5 secs on summery screen before the navigation starts)
– No Directions breakdown list: WTF? Even Bing Maps and Nokia Maps have it.
– POIs are useless: You can’t tap on them
– No way to save or favorite a location: only recent destinations/searches are automatically saved in a history list that can be manually cleared
– No traffic data, No Public Transit Data
– No way to have more than one itinerary unless you stop/cancel the current one and manually re-calculate another one (wtf again?)
– Requires an active Data connection to do the routing calculation even-though it has offline maps loaded on the device
– More missing stuff that I can’t remember right now
Anyway check out my hands-on video below (after the break):
The thing is that Ovi Maps has been split in two applications: Nokia Maps (which is pretty nice) and Nokia Drive. This is why the later lacks most of the common features found in a navigation application and this frankly sucks. But it’s all free so no need to complain right?
By the way; Microsoft can you finally encrypt the XAP/Apps in the Marketplace now?
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