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Lost with all the maps
By Charlie on 28 September 2009
BOSTON, USA – Living in Europe, I was accustomed to whipping out my phone, booting up Ovi Maps, and finding out where I was and where I needed to go. The synchronization through Ovi also made it easy for me to set up landmarks from my browser, or transfer landmarks from one device to another.
But since I’ve moved to the USA, the whole thing has broken down, mostly due to lack of uniform network coverage. Read on to hear my trials and tribulations and weigh in with some of your own stories.
I have the whole world in my hand
The cost of getting mobile maps seems to have gone down,* because everyone seems to have a navigator in their car and electronics shops have tens of models on display. I already see behavior modification where people no longer give directions, but just an address, expecting the receiver to either look it up through a PC browser or use their own navigator.
And there is no doubting the geeky thrill of being able to see street maps peppered with points of interest or satellite images of your surroundings, all from the palm of your hand and from anywhere you happen to be. It’s also thrilling to just start driving or walking, knowing that, when the time comes, you just open up your device and get the directions you need.
Except when it breaks down.
Lost. No, really lost.
We were off to visit my relatives in rural Pennsylvania, but at the end, switched destinations to meet them at a party. No worries. I had the address and waypoint programmed into my Ovi Maps on my phone.
When we approached the general area where the party was, we then pulled out my phone to get the last turns needed. Alas, there was no network coverage and I had not loaded the area maps into my phone.
We first tried all sorts of electronic rain dances – rebooting, changing SIMs, changing phones, even resorting to GMaps (D’oh – no coverage = absolutely useless). We then moved to Plan B and tried calling my relatives, but being at a party, they did not hear their phones. Then Plan C was asking the gas station, but they didn’t have any maps that seemed to help (huh, isn’t that an indicator), nor did they know the road. We just started driving in an arbitrary direction until the coverage kicked in and we were able to get back on track.
After getting yelled at by the whole family the rest of the way (it was hot, we were all hungry and tired from the long drive, you know the scene), we finally made it to the party.
Lessons
Our behavior has changed, making us depend on our wee electronic devices to supplement our brains. But we need to make sure that all that supplemental information is actually in our devices – I need to figure out how to load all the regional maps into my device, that was the mistake that set up this failure. Also, this story illustrates a deep dependence we have on network connections. While in Europe, I never ran into problems; in the US, it is more likely for me to be in rural areas where coverage is not as robust.
Ironically, this has only happened once to us, since we spend most of our time in a more urban area with better network coverage. But the one experience – hopelessly lost in an unfamiliar area – has made us smarter in how we use our mobile maps. Now we have printed maps for our region and make a point of printing out directions before we head off somewhere. Just to be sure. Until we regain confidence in using maps in rural areas here in the US.
Do you have similar stories? How did you overcome being lost? Are you as dependent as I am on Ovi Maps?
Image from .Larry Page
*After all these frustrations, I considered getting a small navigator with the maps built in, but it would have ended up being less convenient and even more expensive. Go figure. Now I’m off to load all those maps!
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Tags | GPS, Maps, navigation, Ovi Maps
September 28th, 2009 at 8:21 am
Presently it can be a problem even when you have the maps pre-loaded on your phone if you are one of the many unlucky owners of a Nokia N97. I do love the phone, don’t get me wrong, but the GPS issues are driving me and many other around the bend. One minute you are fine, driving down the road. Th next minute you are eledgedly stationary, and a few seconds later you are either travelling at light speed or travelling at the correct speed, but a few 100m behind your true position. The other fun one is when you are eledgedly driving though hedgerows next to the road you are actually on. hopefully at some point Nokia will advise if this is actually a Hardware / Software / Firmware issue or a bti of each. Some beleive that a rear cover replacement can sort this out, to a degree, but it would be nice to get an official statement from Nokia, as Nokia Care appear unable to provide on in my local area (UK).
RANT OVER
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September 28th, 2009 at 9:30 am
I’m in Europe and loaded my Nokia phone with maps of Austria, Germany and France on my E71. I can save money on data connection and not worry about no signal. I also carry an extra battery inclase the massive 1500mah runs out, with 2 batteries I’m pretty much covered for a whole week.
Many locations have weak signal or no signal at all, so I always made sure to download the map of the area I am traveling to ahead of time.
That’s the coolest thing about Ovi/Nokia Maps, being able to have the maps preload without having to worry about data connection. I’m very surprised you didn’t preload your phone with maps of the whole PA with the whole USA, it’s only about 1GB and memory cards are really cheap these days.
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September 28th, 2009 at 9:39 am
“shops have tens of models on display.”
“tens” ?!? You’ve been in Europe way too long
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September 28th, 2009 at 9:58 am
For 3 years now, since Nokia Maps was launched, everyone has been hopeing that Nokia will improve the map detail in our contry. I, as a Nokia user, and many of our customers (I represent a company that sells GSM terminals in Romania, most of them are Nokia) are “jumping the fence” to the competition because of the lack of detail in the Romanian maps. Some, who are more loyal to the Nokia brand, are spending an extra 150-200 euro, and buying Garmin’s Mobile XT with the RO.A.D. 2008 maps (which can guite you to almmost any adress in the country, in whatever city… even in small towns), while others not fixated on the usual quality of Nokia phones, go for Windows Mobile based handsets and use iGo.
At their current detail, the maps available on Nokia’s Ovi Maps 3.0 for my country are only good for navigating from city to city, using the main roads only. If you need to search for a specific adress in a city, you’re out of luck. I ask you, why would somebody pay for this?
If Nokia wants to make some (more) money of Maps they should FIRST update and upgrade the maps. I, for one, could’t care less if I can see the Eiffel Tower in 3D in France, I won’t buy a licence that doesn’t help me to get from point A to point B in my country.
I’m not sure how much more time we can wait for this before the credibility of Ovi Maps fades completly. There already are clients NOT BUYING the 6710 Navigator because they know what to expect from the maps, and they think it’s not worth it.
It’s a shame because Nokia made available a good service, but made it useless because of lack of updates.
Hope this can be fixed SOON, IN ALL COUNTRIES.
Dan.
PS: as a comparison; Romanian maps on Garmin = >400MB vs. Romanian maps on Ovi Maps ~= 15MB (and, no, I dont belive they are compressed better)
PS2: Can somebody at Nokia tell me why are the Romanian maps much more detailed on vine.nokia.com than on maps.ovi.com?
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September 28th, 2009 at 11:43 am
I can only chime in on Dan’s comment about Romanian map coverage: Millions of people would love to have the luxury of being able to just say that they forgot to download the map. If you are travelling to eastern Europe the map data simply isn’t there. http://www.OpenStreetMap.org anyone?
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September 28th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I find myself using Google Maps almost exclusively, as they load fast and I can get the data I want in under 1 minute. The few times I have tried to use Nokia/Ovi maps on the phone it takes over 2-3 minutes for the tiles to load.
I am currently in London and on Saturday night a friend and I were walking from Kensington to Soho via the park. When we reach Picadilly, we had a disagreement about which way to walk to the restaurant. Both of us tried using Ovi Maps, he on his 5800, me on the N86, and both of us got super frustrated when it took forever for the map tiles to load.
I switched over to Gmaps, got all the info we needed in a search plus a path, switched back to Ovi to see what it was doing other than hogging battery and it was still loading.
Dinner was lovely, we went to an Indian Tapas place on Rupert Street.
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September 29th, 2009 at 12:16 am
Something like Google Maps is good if, 1. You aren’t driving and have to worry about operating your vehicle (plus it is illegal to text in many states and Google Maps would be considered texting), 2. you have the patience to read everything, and 3. either your eyes are good enough to read that tiny writing or you need glasses full-time and won’t crash cause you put reading glasses on and can’t see anything else with them on!
So, since I do not fall into any of those 3 categories I need Ovi Maps. Like others I like how you can pre-load maps. Unlike others my usage is NAM only. As a side note, Nokia bought Navteq a couple of years ago and I have a GPS system in my car with a Navteq DVD. I have tested it many times and Ovi Maps and my car give the same instructions 80 – 90 percent of the time.
As with mbrett, and countless others, one of my biggest complaints would be losing the GPS signal. What’s bigger? Any time I approach a major freeway interchange Ovi Maps wants to recalculate my route. That’s okay if you’re in an area where there are only a couple of freeways, but I’m in Southern California! Heck, just commuting 25 miles from home to the office I need 2 freeways and travel through 4 or 5 major freeway interchanges.
In short, when I travel to other states and I don’t have my car I would be lost without Ovi Maps. The voice guidance is the most important aspect as I’m in a rental car, not a rally car with a navigator sitting next to me (I WISH!!!!). Get the GPS fix and recalculations addressed and you have a rock solid application.
Lloyd…..
P.S. I used to have issues with time to load when I was with T-Mobile as Nokia’s phones (less the new N900) won’t work on T’s 3G. I don’t have issues with AT&T’s 3G with Ovi Maps (just other issues, but that’s a different article).
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October 14th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
I had a Nokia N82 and had no problems with it and the nav was great. I have changed to an E71 and the difference could not be worse. If I had the E71 first I would not have paid for the 12 month all regions and would have brought a Sat Nav specific item. The E71 has become a liability and not an aid. I recently drove 2100 kms across europe and frequently had to turn it off, it would frequently not pick up satellites as the phone switched networks, it would say I was 20metres to the right of where I actually was and then start giving bizarre navigation instructions. It likes to have me go round and round roundabouts. Today in Western Norway it refuses to pick up satellites but my old N82 picks them up straight away, but as they are on different networks I cant easily swap licences back to my old phone. The E71 GPS seems riddled with issues.
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