Nokia Maps 2.0 leaves Beta status
Friday, May 23rd, 2008
Nokia Maps 2.0 has now been formally released by Nokia and is available for download from here. Although this adds little since the last beta version, all the beta versions have added lots more functionality than Nokia Maps 1.0. The main new features since 1.0 are improved car navigation and pedestrian modes, support for satellite images, much more local content, multimedia city guides, and a new user interface. Other features we should coming (as mentioned before) are near real time traffic information, and links into “Share with Ovi” for sharing POIs and routes.
One of the fixes that’s occurred between the first beta and the release is that UK 7 digit postcodes now work properly. They’ve also added Network based positioning (similar to that used in Google Maps) for a rough location until the GPS can precisely locate you. This works on most phones today, although the E90 will need a “software update” will should be released soon.
This all bodes well for Nokia, although they are still a little behind TomTom and Garmin with their feature range, and some people are still questioning their pricing model. It will be interesting to see how many current phones get new firmwares with this version installed by default..










