Nokia 
While travelling around India , one of my few gripes with my previous N95 and my current N82 was that the Maps that Nokia provided on its GPS Nokia Maps software was completely useless outside of major cities.
For example , in my town Udipi or Manipal . In Nokia’s Maps , you’ll find yourself as a small dot right in the middle of a giant background. No details , no roads , nothing. Just a green colored background.
They used to show the Main road of Udupi that goes up to Manipal but even that disappeared with Nokia Maps v2.0 . But granted , Manipal and Udipi is a small town. Udipi only has touristic importance and Manipal‘s just a famous student town in India which proudly boasts that they have students from over 54 countries.
Visiting the Tourist places in India like Hampi or Mysore, I had the same problem. Nothing but a green background. As a result of which whenever I travelled I started using Nokia’s Maps less and less and used Google’s s60 Google Maps client more . And my tourist guide book , The “Lonely Planet“. Its a book that has everything that a tourist could want to know about a place , with their own Maps included in most situations. All in one giant bulky book. I wish Lonely Planet had an S60 application, it’d be way better than carrying that book around. Its shocking how much information is in the Maps in that book though. Esspecially when you compare it to Nokia’s luckluster local Maps.
The one time Nokia Maps did come in useful was when I travelled to Bangalore. Its a pretty important city in India and Nokia’s Maps had almost every street covered. It was an explosion of information with names of hotels , phone numbers of places , landmarks etc. Everything was well marked on the Bangalore Map and yes, it did come in VERY useful. But i could only think ” Dang , I wish Nokia Maps was like this with every place I travel to, in India“. I mean , what good is having inbuilt GPS in your phone, if you cant even do anything with it ?
Fortunately Nokia conversations posted an article yesterday , detailing why the Maps in India arnt exactly top notch :
Dejected in JaipurWe always get a great response from India. And we hope to do more articles on Nokia-related stuff from there. In one of our recent articles announcing the release of the Nokia 6210 Navigator in India, practically everyone pointed out the poor quality of the digital maps in India.
I dug deeper and we’re going to see if we can get someone from our Maps group to elaborate. But what I found out from Nokia Conversations pal Justin Oppelaar, the poor quality of digital street maps is not new.
Justin tells me that India has been a challenge, especially street names. That makes turn-by-turn navigation outside the big cities very difficult using the traditional methods. Justin used Jaipur as an example. Go to Google Maps and thousand of small streets are not even labeled (do they even have names?).
Honestly though , You cant blame them. What they’re talking about is completely true. Even a small town like Manipal or Udipi has hundreds of small streets and alleys here and there that I’m not even sure have names. Then there’s places like Mumbai (aka Bombay) where the roads and streets (among other things) keep getting renamed on the whims of the extremist party that is in charge over there.
However back at Nokia Conversations, they do go on to say this :
Hmm. Interesting. Might this be a good candidate for co-creation, getting locals to help create these maps in a social mapping kind of way? Is this an opportunity for a small local company to make it big? Like I said, we’re going to dig a bit deeper on this one. But if you have any suggestions, shoot away.
Interesting is right. To add to that, in a country as huge as India, getting locals to help with the Maps might be the only way to make sure every street gets named on Nokia’s Mapping software. It can only serve to improve it.
Read the whole article over at Nokia conversations here.
A crazy idea I had was , Why doesnt Nokia just get some kind of collaboration going on with Lonely Planet tourist guide book people ? Atleast in India maybe. They have all the major cities covered and they have almost every single small Tourist Town in India covered with their own Maps. I’m sure if Nokia struck up some kind of deal with them , they would benefit majorly. At the very least it’d speed up the development of their Maps in India.
But then again , its just a crazy idea !
-Teh Cj
Clinton is currently based in New Delhi, India and is executive editor for UnleashThePhones. He is responsible for all editorial decisions, and covers all forms of Mobile and mobile-related accessories.
Cj is addicted to caffeine, social media, and technology. Always up for a good conversation, you can reach him through the contact form, his website, on Google Plus 
or on Facebook or Twitter: Follow @clintonjeff
Thanks for the info. You should suggest this to Nokia - your crazy idea is a pretty brilliant crazy idea ;)Sanjay
Thanks for the info. You should suggest this to Nokia - your crazy idea is a pretty brilliant crazy idea ;)Sanjay
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