There was a road that I've never been down - windy country lanes, right general direction...
I grin and whip out my N900 and give it to my wife to navigate us - just the ticket?
No.
An hour later we've been lost several times, argued and are generally very annoyed and unhappy. My wife thinks that *I* think she's stupid 'cos she can't use a map application. She hates that. I hate that.
The maps UI sucks. It is unusable to a novice. The GPS seems to update randomly every 10 mins or so. It blocks the screen with messages. It tries to connect to GPRS when there's no signal (and clearly no need). Mostly it just completely fails to meet its purpose.
As we hit a road we recognised I realised that I was so pissed off with this experience that if I were a consumer who'd paid retail for this device I would want my money back - and as someone who has breathed Maemo for almost a year now, that makes me very, very sad.
Posts
/me wants maemo mapper back!
ReplyDeleteI find ovi maps very unpleasant to use, its "track me" mode keeps rotating the screen for no clear reason. User interface is sluggish at best.
I did a 200 mile journey from Isle of Wight to Cambridge a few months ago, I used my Nokia E71 (S60) and its mapping app, at the same time as my ageing TomTom Go500 (running v7 software).
ReplyDeleteI was very disappointed at the mapping function in the Nokia in comparison with the TomTom, even simply tracking the map and getting the turns right was worse. I paid some money for one month's use of the traffic congestion option on Nokia maps and it didn't seem to do anything useful, yet when I had TomTom traffic it worked very well.
If the N900/Maemo map is largely a direct port, then I would expect to be disappointed.
It's so bad I'm seriously considering a libgpsbt.so wrapper around liblocation and friends, and using dpkg-repack on Navicore/Wayfinder Navigator from my N810.
ReplyDeleteWho'da thunk that the N810's built-in map app would actually be something people'd *want*?
We need to evaluate using of open source maemo mapper.
ReplyDeleteWayfinder on the N810 works fine for me. Is it one issue that Ovi Maps on the N900 doesn't currently allow preinstallation of the maps? In that case no GPRS wouldn't be an issue. I think any serious navigation product needs to be able to navigate without any data connection.
ReplyDeleteMaemo Mapper is not a navigation product.
I have wayfinder on N800 and use it in the US, UK, France and Spain, works perfectly, better than tom tom on my HTC Winmo. great a warning of traffic cameras, can download traffic and plenty of options for calculating routes. I even use it side by side with Carman 0.7 both apps share the gps bluetooth connection to the GPS unit and to the bluetooth OBD2 plugged into the engine management system.
ReplyDeleteOvi Maps on the N900 prototypes from the Summit is in a really sorry state. I truely hope that it will be much better on release.
ReplyDeletea) While you can hack-copy downloaded map data to the device, it insist of having a data connection just for search.
b) Icons in strange locations, UI concept not really "fremantled" and quite strange usage ideas, very different appearance compared to other Nokia apps
tom2: I'd even hope that they remove this embarassing crap before sales release. It is insulting for all the other people working on Maemo5.
ReplyDeleteHow embarassing this non-app is, can be seen here: http://blog.rlove.org/2009/10/google-maps-navigation.html
Google already tries the next generation of mapping applications, whereas Nokia/Gate5 cannot even deliver a first gen mapping application. :-(
Supposedly they'll be providing localized maps on the internal storage depending on the device region it was purchased in. Still doesn't fix the fact that the development doesn't seem to care a lick about providing a useful UI.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to receive mine (on pre-order) but I was hoping for a better mapping tool too. My E63 mapping leaves a lot to be desired, and I would rather not always keep a garmin GPS with me. That said, Maemo Mapper (N800) has gotten me out of "plenty a jam" all over the world, and would love to see that available on the new hardware.
ReplyDeleteIs there any hope of the new Google Navigation being used on the N900? For something so "open" I would it could, but I fear like most things useful, it might be forgotten amongst the crap that is currently being worried about with respect to the N900.
ReplyDelete@ekcloud9: Seems we have to get Java running on Maemo5: http://www.google.com/mobile/products/maps.html#p=default
ReplyDeleteI've tried about 5 gps apps and I trully known that ovi maps is the BEST ever. the maps are incredible updated. the user interface is good but not the best. I'm very pleased with ovi maps 3.0 beta.
ReplyDeleteCompared to Maemo Mapper, Ovi Maps is pretty quick and easy to use once it opens. Of course thats an unfair comparision since N900 is so much faster in general.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of saved maps I've never had a problem with, even before my data plan was setup. It does a great job of downloading all the data and caching it. So if you just causually browse the city before losing net access you'll be fine. (as long as you don't want to use find location :P)
So I guess I've gotten over the usability issues with Ovi Maps, though the fact that it feels the need to ignore the (imo great) Fremantle standards remains irksome. So what I find annoying are the blatantly obvious features missing. I can't save routes? Can't save spots of interest? It doesn't track where I've been?
Oh the GPS is just as fail on the n900 as the n810 afaict, maybe more so. I use a bluetooth gps unit.
ReplyDelete@sonharamar: yea honestly I also really like it, if it had the missing features I talked about. Though I don't have experience with many gps apps, I'm still impressed the thing knows where I am. ;)
ReplyDeleteNokia owns Navteq, the bigget map data company in the world so for them to be turning out turds like OVI maps shows that the company is being run very poorly as of late, because they really do have the resources to do better. I can guarentee they will fail in their efforts to transform into a "services" company if they dont make changes very very fast.
ReplyDelete