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GPS is a feature that’s becoming increasing important to me these days.
And the Nokia N97 Mini with it’s inbuilt GPS and Compass sure is helpful.
Here’s a little bit about it.
The Nokia N97 Mini comes with Nokia’s new Ovi Maps v3 application built in, which is your primary “GPS App” on the device. Ovi Maps v3 has come a long way since when it was called Nokia Maps v1 and definitely shines on touch devices, like the N97 Mini.
Ovi Maps provides pretty much all basic information that you’d need from a Maps Software. There’s Information on Landmarks, Important buildings or shops, Roads, Streets, all with their names displayed. As you can see, the Maps Application occupies the whole screen and looks glorious on the N97 Mini.
When you start up the Maps Application, you’ll see a faint red dot that indicates your Approximate Area. The N97 Mini also has A-GPS, so it might need to connect to your Data Plan to get a GPS Lock faster. Once it does that, the Faint Red Dot turns to a Solid Red Dot, and indicates your position.
The Ovi Maps application might also ask you whether it can go online to download Map Data. Usually (depending on which region you bought the Device from) Map Data is already present on the device (atleast it was with our Indian Region N97 Mini) but in some cases you might need to Manually download the Map data for your area.
Ovi Maps does this automatically for you, as you move along the map. But of course this can be data intensive, so Nokia advices you check out Nokia Map Loader and download the Map Data to your PC (and hence transfer it to your device). You can also download additional voices for GPS navigation, etc.
Speaking of GPS Navigation, our N97 Mini came with 30 Days of Free Drive Navigation.
Drive Navigation, as the name suggests, is a premium service by Nokia that shows you how to get to places, and guides you using the Map and Voice-guidance. The fastest route, Time to get there, all that kind of stuff. It can be really useful. Too bad you have to pay for that service.
It also came with 1 Month worth of Walk-Navigation which is a premium service like Drive-Navigation but….for walking.
It shows you the quickest route through narrower roads or streets that cars cant go through, etc.
The N97 Mini also has a built-in Compass like we mentioned earlier. Unfortunately Nokia did not include any seperate “Compass” App, but there are some available on the Ovi Store for Free.
Otherwise, the Ovi Maps application makes use of the Compass to Orient the Screen. An annoying thing though, is that every time you start up an application that uses the compass, you have to re-calibrate it. It takes a couple seconds, but still, is annoying. Ah well, atleast it’s in there !
There are a ton of other applications on the Ovi Store that make use of the N97 Mini’s GPS and Compass. All you have to do is look for them though. Even Nokia’s famous ‘SportsTracker‘ app wasnt included onboard.
Otherwise, there are a couple GPS-centric apps built in. Just basic ones like “Landmarks” that keeps track of any of your saved favourite GPS points.
It’s worth nothing that Ovi Maps has its own “Favourites” section too (which shares its Database with “Location“).
The Ovi Maps version though, is more intricate. You can sort your favourites into sections and categories, change their Icon, and sync them with the Online version of Ovi Maps.
And a lot more.
Also among the other GPS apps built-in on the N97 Mini is GPS Data, Positioning and a few others under those.
The N97 Mini also has Geo-Tagging support for Images, so you can tag any Images you take with the Geographical location (Latitude & Longitude).
Just so you can view them later and see where you took them.
Coming back to GPS specifically, you can choose your Positioning Methods, Which Positioning server to use, etc. You dont really need to mess with any of these though.
Under Positioning Methods, you can choose whether or not to use A-GPS, or to use an External Bluetooth GPS unit instead of the built-in one (if you’re worried about Battery, etc).
GPS Reception on the N97 Mini is pretty great. Once locked on, it’d stay locked on. None of the problems that we had on the Original N97 and its weak GPS.
It’s worth mentioning that A-GPS (or “Assisted GPS”) really helps a lot. With A-GPS enabled it takes under a minute to get a GPS-Lock on the N97 Mini. Without A-GPS it could take anywhere from 5 to 15 Minutes.
Here’s a short video on Ovi Maps, the compass and GPS on the Nokia N97 Mini. Just to give you a better idea of how it all looks and works :
So that’s basically it for GPS on the Nokia N97 Mini. Have any questions ? Something we missed ? Do let us know in the comments y’all !
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 things.
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
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