Nokia 'Here Map' arrives at the App Store | Hacker News Reader

Nokia 'Here Map' arrives at the App Store

itunes.apple.com

45 pointsLibertatea28 comments

Much better than Apple Maps, but still:

* The Hayward Gallery is in the wrong place: http://here.net/united-kingdom/london/museum/hayward-gallery... * Searching for "Dover Castle" goes to the Castle in Dover rather than the pub <500m away. (There is a drop-down list which has the match I want, though.)

And the non-Retina resolution tiles are annoying. Do Nokia's high-resolution phones get the same tiles?

Still has my closest grocery store listed as "Albertson's." At least it found the store, which took some coaxing from Apple Maps. It also finds 1 California Street in SF, which Apple Maps failed at a few weeks ago. I note that the pinch gesture behaves in an atypical way. It's more of a "pure zoom" and has no scroll at all, which is kind of a pain.

How is it much better than Apple's maps app? It's just a thin wrapper over Nokia's web site (here.net), and for my location the data is worse and there's no satellite imagery at all. Directions are far more limited (public transport routing isn't even available in the UK) and the UI completely unintuitive (how do I start a route?)

I would welcome a superior maps app to Apple, however just putting a thin wrapper over your existing website isn't going to cut the mustard compared with a slick and native app like Apple's. I'm not sure even Google can match Apple's maps experience, although their superiority with data will make the bigger difference.

how do I start a route?

This bugged me for a while until I realised that they don't do driving navigation. There's a purple button with an arrow (play button) when you're in walking mode that lets you start voice navigation. It's very disappointing.

Let's hope Google Maps for iOS will be released soon now.

I had trouble not chuckling at Google not releasing it after the Maps debacle, but fundamentally I think it's doing a disservice to the Google brand and it's customers in general.

Supposedly it wasn't ready.

The Apple / Google maps deal had a year or so still to run so apparently Google were taken by surprise that Apple pulled the existing app when they did.

Do you happen to have a source for this? I've always heard (via offhand comments, admittedly) that the deal was done and Google wasn't surprised.

Nothing categorical and to be honest I'm not sure I buy it 100%.

The timing of dropping Google maps makes sense - Apple are on an annual upgrade for iOS. If the choice is to launch their own maps 14 months before the end of the deal or 2 months before the end of the deal 14 months makes sense so you've got a fall back.

And if it makes sense then it seems sensible that Google who had all the information and knew of the animosity would be able to work it out.

As long as they read the rumor mills they had 6-8 month notice.

Still might not be long enough, I'm not sure how much development time it takes for an app like that.

Quick Route uses Google's data and is fantastic: http://excitedpixel.com/apps/ios/quickroute/

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I really wanted to like this, but Google is still tops for its location database. Maybe Nokia and the other non-Google players can band together to address this, because I don't see how anyone will catch up otherwise.

It's also strange to me that this is the case, because if they're using FedEX and UPS data you would think that would be a superior location data mining operation.

Interface is a bit rough and appears rushed - hard to tap on some targets, keeps resetting to current location when moving in and out of the app. The live traffic information doesn't seem as up to date as Apple Maps. Nice to have actual locations available compared to the sparse Apple Maps.

I had a quick play around with it, and major locations seem more accurate, but shops and smaller locations are still off (e.g. in the middle of a road or the wrong side) here in Dublin.

At least the Zoo is in the right part of the city... http://i.imgur.com/4bZWP.png vs http://i.imgur.com/eby5R.png

Agreed. The entire map view (including location dot, paths and markers) seems to be rendered in half resolution on Retina devices.

Public transport in London seems to work very well, and the Underground overlay is a nice feature. I will be using this for the time being.

How did this get past QA? It looks terrible on any retina device (every Apple flagship).

I like 'Nokia Maps' much better than 'Here'.

Yes, it's pretty terrible branding, especially for non-English countries. Nokia Maps was much better. I don't know why they felt the need to change it. Just to get a few more articles in the press about it?

No kidding. Maps are about getting you to there.

This one actually has poorer satellite imagery than Apple Maps where I live.

It's quite quick on my iphone 4 but the actual maps are blurred. It would seem that they are rendered at the "old" iphone resolution. This gives the app a very unpolished look unfortunately.

Yeah, it's blazing fast for me; I don't understand the hate in the other comments. Unlike Bing maps, getting directions is intuitive for me, and I couldn't care less about satellite imagery. If caching works at all, this will be a useful app. Guess I will have to give it a week or so for evaluation, though.

Does this have better local data in areas where Apple's mapping app is lacking? I ask, because where I live, this is actually bolstering the case for the new iOS mapping service.

In my area, Apple Maps has better local data.

On an iPad, the experience seems to be identical to using http://here.net/ in Safari. So this is not particularly big news.

Doesn't look like they are using vectors and there is no inertia when zooming. Perhaps features they are saving for the Nokia phones...

That interface looks like MapQuest ten years ago. Completely unacceptable.

Looks like the streets in Tokyo are missing.

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