Skip to footer

Nokia Here Maps app hits iOS and Android

Mourning the loss of Google Maps on your iPhone? You could do worse (much worse) than the new Nokia Here Maps app. 

|
Nokia
A still from the new Nokia Here Maps app, which is available for both Apple and Android devices.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Until this year, Google Maps had been the default mapping app on Apple devices.

But with the release of iOS 6, the latest iteration of Apple's mobile OS, Apple booted Google Maps in favor of its own in-house mapping application.

Which is a problem, since Apple Maps is well behind Google Maps (although to be fair to Apple, the company is doing its best to bring the app up to speed). 

A few months later, and we've got a spot of good news: Nokia has released its own mapping app, Here Maps, for iOS and Android. The app is free to download, and offers maps and search capability in approximately 200 countries. Like Google Maps, Nokia Here includes public transit, walking, driving directions. 

The maps, pictured here at left, are bright and easy to navigate. The interface is uncluttered and clean. 

So, is the Here app actually any good? Well, in a review over at Cult of Mac, Giles Turnbull found some slowness in the software, and some less than optimal detail quality on certain towns. 

"Overall though, I’d say Here is a success, and a useful addition to any iPhone," Turnbull writes. "Ultimately people want simple, clear maps, and they were something found wanting in Apple’s own maps when iOS 6 was released. Here provides them, and it costs you nothing. There’s no turn-by-turn navigation, so Apple wins points there. But there are step-by-step walking instructions, so Nokia wins some back."

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Nokia Here Maps app hits iOS and Android
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/1120/Nokia-Here-Maps-app-hits-iOS-and-Android
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe