3 posts tagged “gps”
Well, I've no doubt the screen dump above will come as welcome news to many - just don't get too carried away, alright? Yes, it is a doubling of New Zealand maps data, but obviously if you double almost nothing, its still almost nothing at the end of the day.
If you've just checked and seen only 6.6MB of NZ map data available you need to install the latest version of the Maploader 1.3.5, available here (or maybe just reinstall whichever one you have to refresh the maps data information, not sure, I installed the latest one and on loading it began refreshing the data). You may also need Nokia Maps 2.0 (available here), but I've not confirmed this yet, as I had 2.0 on my phone already.
I've had a quick look at them, and I must say that the Auckland street detail is now much, much better. A quick look around showed almost all streets named, although how their placement is I've yet to confirm. No navigation on offer from what I can tell, and the point of interest (POI) data is still very limited.
So, bottom line, this is a good start Nokia, but thats all it is. I'm still hoping the major update rumoured to be arriving around the 23rd turns out to be bona-fide.
Garmin Mobile XT still remains the premier GPS software for GPS-enabled N- and E-Series phones. I should mention that Garmin's position is even further strengthened by recent updates to the free NZ Open GPS maps, which finally fix street and POI searching. Its glorious - go out and get it today (Ebay still seems like the best place to pick it up, if you're trying to find the best price).
Thanks to Geekzone forum member martyyates for breaking this news.
If your country has been poorly served by Nokia Maps to-date its worth having a look - place a comment here if there are updates available for your country!
Hi all,
Just a very quick post regarding an update to Nav4All (one of several download-maps-as-you-go styled GPS softwares).
I received an email this morning from Nav4All to let me know that they have now added New Zealand maps support to their service.
You may be thinking "So what? I already have google maps, and MGMaps installed on my phone for that". Well here is the thing: Nav4All has voice guidance - a rarity for this style of free-GPS software.
I've yet to try it, having just received the email from them - but rest assured I will give an update once its installed and running replete with screenshots!
Ricky Cadden over at symbian-guru had this to say about Nav4All - bear in mind that the software has been through a couple of iterations since then and you may its performance improved over Ricky's experience.
Heres a little Christmas present from me to all the frustrated N95 (N82/E90 etc) owners here in godzone who purchased their shiny new GPS-enabled handset, only to discover that Nokia Maps for New Zealand are utter rubbish; a little guide to getting the most from this aspect of your otherwise much-loved phone! I know that NZ isn't the only country affected in this way, so hopefully there'll be a little something here for users hailing from other countries too. If it isn't already obvious, I'm a little bit on the verbose side, so to keep this to nice edible, bite-sized chunks I'll break it up into 3 parts and post them up over the coming week or so. I'm really hoping that if you've been disappointed with this feature of your N95 till now you can usher in the new year feeling much better about it.
Straight off the bat its important to talk firmware, because for reasons that'll become clear in a moment this makes quite a difference in terms of the GPS experience. There are several firmware iterations available for the N95 - V10, V11, V12, and V20 - you'll need to find out which firmware version your phone is by typing *#0000# into the phone before going any further. If your N95 was purchased from Vodafone, chances are you're sporting the V12 firmware, which has Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) enabled. A-GPS lets you lock faster by augmenting the inbuilt GPS receiver with information from the Vodafone network regarding the signal towers nearest you. This of course does mean that you'll incur some data charges, but fortunately A-GPS only uses 6-12kb for each lock, so its well worth it. Vodafone issues their own custom firmware so V12 is currently the highest firmware available to you if your N95 is branded, if your handset is parallel imported then Nokia Software Updater (NSU) will probably show you that an upgrade to V20 is available. A word of warning if V12 is the highest firmware upgrade available to you; the V12 firmware has a very annoying bug - it fails to detect some keypresses. If that doesn't sound like a big deal to you, try to imagine texting someone while it randomly drops a keypress here and there - you'll have to back up and edit your message, possibly several times for every message you send. If GPS isn't that important to you, or you're a mad texting fiend, then you'll have to weigh up whether you really want the V12 firmware. Luckily there is a way around this for brave souls willing to void their warranty. . .debrand your handset.
Debranding your handset sounds a little drastic, but its something I've done several times without incident, and certainly without regret. Its a little beyond the scope of this piece to walk you through the entire process - I'll just leave you a couple of links to places where help is at hand - here and here. If you haven't checked out either of those sites before I highly recommend joining both. So rather than producing a guide, I'll just talk about briefly about the considerable benefits of the latest V20 firmware. Basically the V20 firmware finally fulfills the promise that the N95 had from the beginning. Its not perfect by any means, but there are no bugs on the magnitude of the V12 keypress-bug, so on balance the positives far, far outweigh the negatives. The addition of demand paging and some other application-handling routines has increased RAM to ~30MB after a fresh boot, and even better true multi-tasking is now on offer.This also has knock-on effects to battery life, which is extended by around 20% on V20 (if you're struggling with your battery life then make sure you check this list of optimisations while you're at it). If that weren't enough startup time is improved, and the startup speed of the camera application is now significantly accelerated (on a par with the N95 8GB). These major changes are accompanied by a variety of smaller, but nevertheless very welcome, improvements.
Hopefully I've convinced you to go ahead and get the V20 firmware, but if not you may at least have worked out which firmware you're on and begun to weigh up the pros and cons of updating. From here on in I'll be discussing the N95 from the standpoint of an A-GPS enabled handset, so I'm hoping that you're on at least the V12 firmware so that we're comparing apples with apples in the subsequent posts. In the next installment I'm going to look over Nokia's native maps application, and then cover some of the other software solutions out there, before giving an in-depth run down on the best GPS solution currently available for the Symbian OS in New Zealand.
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