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A couple of days have passed since I posted the first entry on the Nokia Maps / Smart2Go application and how it fares for car navigation. In this post I’ll take a look at how well the application fares while being on foot in an unknown city. I am in Rome at the moment and since I don’t know the city very well, a great opportunity to use the application. Be warned, there are quite a number of things to be described so this blog entry is not going to be a short one.

The Tools

In the past days I’ve been using the Nokia Maps application on a Nokia N93 together with an external GPS receiver connected to the phone via Bluetooth. In addition, I downloaded a map of the metro system of Rome as a pdf file to the phone and archived a couple of eMails on the phone containing addresses of places I wanted to go and phone numbers of people I wanted to meet. As a backup I also printed out all of this information since I am a strong believer of always having a plan B. Having all information on the phone turned out to be much better than the paper version as the information is instantly available without having to open the backpack or going through half a dozen sheets of paper to find what one is looking for.

Preparation Phase

Before going on a trip I usually do some preparation work at home to ensure I have all the information I require and to get an idea of where the hotel, work place, train station, airport etc. is located. I usually do this on the PC with an Internet mapping application such as Map24 or Mappy or the PC application of my ‘old’ navigation system. This time I additionally located the places I wanted to go in Nokia Maps on the phone and saved them as landmarks for quick retrieval later on. I felt that the step on the PC is still required as the mobile phone screen is too small for getting an overall view of the situation. Also, the mapping application behaves quite slowly when zooming to a resolution that covers a couple of kilometers on the screen. Scrolling through the map in this resolution is quite frustrating. Scrolling through the map while only showing a few streets around a location, however, is very quick. Since this is the view which is later on also required for navigation it’s still tolerable.

Warning: Being in an unknown city and not knowing exactly where to go is a stressful situation. Trying out new things while already being overwhelmed by external impressions is not advisable. Thus, knowing how to use the mapping application before one has to rely on it takes a lot of stress out of the situation.

Navigation vs. ‘Free’ Walking

For street navigation on foot two application modes can be used. If you’ve paid for navigation you can use the on-foot navigation option to plot a course from the current GPS position to the selected place. While this works great for car navigation I found it quite awkward to use for street navigation on foot. When walking into the wrong direction for example, the application re-calculates the route instead of just asking the user to turn around. Also, the application constantly switches back to car navigation for which routing rules are quite different. For the moment, I therefore prefer the standard mode as shown in the image on the left in which the user saves a destination as a landmark which is then displayed on the main map. The current GPS position is shown as a cross and the location is updated as the user walks down the street. As destinations are usually in walking distance (less than 2 km for most occasions I would say) it’s easy to zoom in and out at the beginning to find the right direction and keep the zoom level low for the final turns. In practice this mode worked well for me and on top is even free of charge.

Usage Scenario 1: Airport to Hotel

It’s midnight and the plane touches down at Ciampino airport. After waiting endlessly for the baggage to finally show up on the transportation belt there is only one thought left for the day: How long does it take to get to the hotel!? A Taxi is found quickly and somewhere in the twilight zone between being aware and asleep I manage to start the mapping application on the mobile phone to observe the progress to the hotel. The GPS receiver takes a couple of minutes to find the satellites but one locked I see the distance shrinking and shrinking. It’s also a good tool to see if the driver takes you on a sightseeing tour to increase the fare. In my case the driver was honest, tired or both as he took the direct route to the hotel. Great!

Usage Scenario 2: From Work To The Train Station To The Apartment

Getting picked up by a local in the morning for work at an unknown place has its benefits. Being dumped on the street after work to find your way home through a foreign city is less fun. But hey, I’ve got a navigation system now, so finding my way from work to the next rain station worked like a charm. Off I went with the metro to the station closest to the apartment I’ve rented for the next weeks. I’ve never been at this place before either, so the mapping application has to prove itself once again. Now that the GPS receiver has kind of understood that I am in Rome, it usually takes less than 15 seconds for getting a first position. Again, finding the apartment is easy as walking in the wrong direction immediately becomes obvious on the mobile’s screen.

Usage Scenario 3: A Ride To The City Center And The Search For A Bookstore

I am sure you’ve been in a similar situation as this. You are in a foreign city and somebody tells you to take this or that bus to ride into town to go to a certain place, a book store in my case. Great, you are on the bus but you are not really sure when you should get off. Be it because instructions where not quite that detailed or be it that the bus stop signs are not really very well visible. No problem with a navigation system in your hand. I’ve created a landmark in the mapping application for the book store I wanted to visit and was following the progress of the bus towards my destination. No more anxiety of when to get off or to miss the right stop. Once it looked close enough on the phone’s map, I got off and walked the last meters to the book store. I am impressed. Wandering through the narrow streets of Rome I noticed that the GPS receiver has some problems now and then giving me a precise position. Sometimes the position fix is lost altogether. In practice this is not much of a problem as reading names of crossing streets is good enough to follow your progress on the map.

Summary

I have to say that I am impressed by the possibilities of Nokia Maps. Similarly to car navigation, using the application for navigating through a city on foot takes some of the uncertainties and detours out of the equation. Finally, I have a feeling of direction which I was so desperately missing when wandering through unknown cities. Not all people feel as disoriented when coming to a foreign city as me. For those who do, however, this application will be a real help. As processing power increases on mobile platforms, some hiccups described above will surely be fixed as well, improving the experience further. And looking even more into the future a total navigation solution with voice commands and instructions is quite imaginable. But that’s for another post.

After winning the awared for the "best host of the Carnival of the Mobilists in 2006" during last month’s 3GSMWorldCongress in Barcelona, Rudy de Waele over at m-trends sets out to do it again for 2007. Once more, Rudy has presented the best blog entries from the mobile world in his very special way. So don’t wait and head over for a great read!

According to its name, the Nokia E65 is an S60 business phone. Three Italy, however, sees opportunities for the phone in the consumer market as well as impressively shown by the three beauties on the pictures.

I’ve known for some time that there are special mobile and fixed line phones out there which can encrypt calls from end to end. I recently met Dr. Björn Rupp, CEO of GSMK, a company developing such phones. While probably not of much interest for the average person, there are a lot of people out there from politicians, police, top level managers, etc. who want to be sure their call is not intercepted. Not by the government, not by a secret service, not by tech savvy reporters or nosy mobile phone company employees. All these people can get access to normal mobile calls as the only interface over which the call is encrypted is between the mobile phone and the base station (GSM) or the radio network controller (UMTS). Over all other interfaces, the call is sent without any encryption and core networks even contain standardized interfaces for law enforcement agencies to tap into calls.

The phones developed by GSMK encrypt calls end to end by establishing a data connection between the two ends instead of a normal voice call and then use a strong encryption algorithm to ensure eavesdroppers have no chance. Dr. Rupp’s business card is also the first one I’ve ever seen which contains his PGP key ID and fingerprint. Also, they’ve published the source code of their encryption algorithm on their website, so no security through obscurity. Cool stuff, I am impressed!

The 3GSM Congress 2007 is over but the year continues to provide interesting meeting and discussion opportunities in real life for people working in the mobile industry. London is not only attractive for it’s monthly Mobile Monday gatherings but also for Symbian’s Smartphone Show and the Mobile User Experience Conference (MEX) which will take place on the 2nd and 3rd of May at the Wallacespace near Covent Garden.

It seems this conference is different for a number of reasons. Firstly, the conference has a 10 point ‘manifesto’ which deals with the current state of the mobile user experience and how the organizers around Marek Pawlowski think it can be improved. No beating around the bush, they come right to the point. The manifesto was then given out to potential speakers of the conference for them to choose one of these topics to kick off discussion from their point of view during the conference.

The speaker lineup is very interesting indeed as well. Christian Lindholm for example, one of my favorite ‘mobile’ personalities, formerly director at Nokia and serving as a VP at the mobile division of Yahoo for some time will lead a session on how mobiles and applications should adapt to changing physical environments of the mobile user. Among others, the speaker lineup also includes Cliff Crosbie, Director of Retail Marketing at Nokia, Al Russell, head of Mobile Internet & Content services at Vodafone, Mathew Menz, Head of Interaction Design of Motorola and Antti Ohrling, co-founder of Bylk.

The venue itself is also quite interesting. Instead of a standard conference place, the organizers have selected Wallacespace, which, judging from the pictures on their web space, is quite comfortable and very much different from normal conference places. I am quite thrilled about the whole lineup so if my daytime job allows, I’ll attend.

A bit late but great as always! So for the best what people have written in the mobile blog sphere in the past 1 (+ 0.5) weeks, head over to Pikesoft and enjoy!

Every now and then I see a presentation or read a piece on something and I think "yeah, he/she’s so right". It happened to me again this evening when I found "Mobile the 7th mass media is to internet like TV is to radio" by Tomi T. Ahonen over at Communities Dominate Brands. I you haven’t seen it so far take a look, it’s a real eye opener on why the mobile Internet does not only include all benefits of print media, audio and video recordings, the TV and the Internet but far surpasses them due to it’s unique capabilities.

He goes on to explain that developers should not aim at improving and creating new services to make the mobile Internet experience resemble the desktop Internet as close as possible. The is because the mobile is "Not the dumb little cousin of the Internet" as Tomi puts it. Instead, he argues that developers should use the mobile’s advantages such as it’s close relationship to it’s user, it’s unique identity, that it’s always on and always carried, that it has instant payment possibilities and it’s instantaneous support of the users creative impulses as guides and opportunities to create new services. Truly a masterpiece!

It’s good to see some companies have already understood this concept as mobile’s such as the Nokia’s NSeries phones, Sony Ericsson UIQ phones and others are great platforms to base such ideas on. The best phones, however, are no good if operators hide inside their walled gardens. But some of them have already understood and are embracing the future rather than to fight against it. Shining examples in recent months are Three with their free international roaming, German MVNOs offering prepaid mobile Internet access for a fair price to the masses, and operators such as One in Austria who have started selling high volume wireless Internet access for fair prices as well.

With an Internet tablet or a powerful mobile web browser running on devices like the Nokia N- or E-Series phones, this blog can be read on the go pretty much like on an ordinary PC. Many people, however, use less powerful browsers which need content adaptation. Additionally, network coverage while traveling can vary greatly and sometimes browsing while on a train or in the car is difficult. There are other ways, however, to read this and other blogs on the go:

• A mobile RSS feed reader: Similar to feed reader programs on the PC, users can make a list of their favorite blog feeds. The program then downloads the content of the feeds which can then be viewed off line. This is my favorite way of reading blogs both on the PC and on the mobile. Several mobile feed reader applications are available and my favorite is Resco News for S60.

• Opera Mini: If mobile phone processing power or high mobile Internet prices are an issue, Opera Mini is the solution. It’s a Java applet, runs on many phones, and uses a server on the net to format web pages for easy viewing on a small display. Pages are also compressed to save money and to reduce download times.

• Google Mobile: Offers a service which reformats pages for mobile viewing.

• Winksite: Among other things, Winksite can take RSS feeds to create mobile websites. This blog for example can be read with almost any mobile browser via http://winksite.com/msauter/wireless. For people with phones that include a 2D barcode reader application, I’ve supplied a code on the side bar which contains the URL of the mobile version of this blog.

How delighted I was when I heard Nokia’s announcement that they would release their Nokia Maps (a.k.a. Smart2Go) mapping application for handsets other than the Nokia N95. Right after coming back from the 3GSM congress, I downloaded a copy for my N93 and used it in the past couple of days together with a Nokia LD-3W Bluetooth GPS receiver. If you want to get a basic idea of what it does and how it works I can recommend a good intro on Antony Pranata’s blog. After using it for a couple of days now I sat down tonight to blog a bit about how the application performs in practice.

I decided to split this report in several parts as the mapping software is quite powerful and has more features than can be described in a single entry:

• Part 1: Navigation to close-by (100km) destinations.
• Part 2 (to come soon): Nokia maps as a guide for finding a location in a city while walking
• Part 3 (to come soon): Route planning and navigation for destinations 500+ kilometers away (more demanding than the task in part 1)

Part 1: Car Navigation To Close-By Destinations

License and Payment Model

Most features of Nokia maps can be used for free. The most important ones are certainly the free download of all maps, route planning and GPS city navigation on foot. Car navigation with voice commands, however, is not free. The pricing scheme is quite interesting. Western Europe maps for car navigation for a 30 day period are 10 euros. A three year license is 99 euros. In practice, I think this is quite a good idea as it’s possible to try the application for a month for a small sum before making a longer and more expensive commitment. For Nokia, selling their service this way has the additional benefit to bind customers to their phones for the next three years as the 3 year license can be used with another phone as well by safeguarding the activation code received during the payment procedure. Paying for voice navigation can be done directly in the application by entering your credit card information or by premium SMS.

Getting The Maps

There are several ways to transfer the maps to the phone. The most convenient way is to download them as they are needed over the air directly into the phone, either via Wifi or via the GSM/UMTS network. For my first test I tried both ways by searching for some destinations all over the world. Maps for the surroundings of these destinations were quickly downloaded. When zooming in or out or moving around the selected destination, additional parts are quickly added as well. Maps are not discarded after exiting the application and are re-used. In order not to use the GSM/UMTS network for my other tests I decided to download additional map parts via the Nokia MapLoader, a program on the PC. Over the PC additional maps can be downloaded to the memory card of the mobile phone within a matter of minutes. I decided to download the maps of Southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Rome (Lazio) and Paris (Ile de France). Together, the maps require around 200 megabytes, no big deal for my 2 GB memory card.

Selecting the Destination And Calculating A Route

A route for navigation is selected by using the current GPS location as starting point and by searching for a destination either by address, by previously stored location (landmark), from additional guides (to be bought separately), from recent searches or directly from the map. When searching for a specific address the application searches the maps already loaded and also remote maps in case an Internet connection is available. The beta version of the software I used had a pretty ugly bug in the search function. When I entered several words for the street name (e.g. "Rue Lafontaine") the search became stuck in an endless loop and I had to restart the phone. Searching for addresses works o.k. for single words ("e.g. Lafontaine") which also finds my "Rue Lafontaine". Search times are acceptable and a search takes about 15 seconds. Once the destination has been found the next step is to calculate the route and to display it. For my test I selected a destination about 50 kilometers away to see how long the route calculation would take. For my destination, the calculation took about one minute. Quite a long time when you already sit in the car, poised to go. Once the route is shown on the map one can start navigation. Again, the application takes about another minute to re-calculate the route before the first voice command is finally issued.(**) This is quite long in practice and the software designers should concentrate on making this process faster. However, it is still acceptable and usable.

Navigation

Navigation is pure joy. One can select 2D or 3D mode. The picture on the left shows how navigation looks like in 3D mode. Unlike on the picture, which was taken just when a turn occurred, the route to be taken is always shown in vertical direction, i.e. you always drive towards the upper side of the phone screen. I was a bit concerned that the screen would be a bit too small in practice. To my positive surprise, however, I had no issues with the screen size while driving, possibly also because the voice commands where clear and were given at the right time. Also the maps were up to date and newly built roundabouts were already known.

Running Other Applications While Navigating

I like to listen to podcasts while driving so a main requirement for me is that the application allows other programs to run in the background. This works quite well in practice and on my way back I listened to a 45 minutes podcast running in the background while navigating. The occasional navigation speech commands and podcast audio were mixed and played over the speaker  simultaneously. Incoming calls mute the podcasts and one can accept or reject incoming calls as usual. When rejecting, the phone returns to the mapping application and resumes the podcast. When accepting a call, the mapping application was terminated, probably because the phone ran out of memory. Not good in practice as you have to stop afterwards and repeat the route planning. It could be that the mapping application was terminated because the podcast application was also running. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some additional memory…

Stability

Taken everything into account I am quite happy with the mapping application. It does its job and it does it well. Stability however, could still be improved. While using the mapping application this morning for example, the calendar reported an upcoming meeting while I was driving and using the mapping software. This prompted the phone to make a reset and to deny reactivation until I removed the battery for a couple of seconds. Not quite what you want to do while driving. It could have been the OS, it could have been the application which malfunctioned, but as a user I don’t care.

Summary

Part 1 was already quite convincing for me. If the application also performs well for navigation to destinations more than 500 km away (part 3 of this review), I’ll leave my old navigation system at home for my next trip. So much for today, more on other things you can do with Nokia maps in part 2 of this review. If you have any questions in the meantime, please leave a comment.

(**) Update: It’s also possible not to display the route and instead hit the back button a couple of times to leave route planning once the destination has been found and displayed on the map. Once out of route planning, the application still shows the selected destination on the map. From the menu, it’s now possible to select "navigate to" which saves the time required to calculate the route. Not quite obvious to do it this way but it saves a lot of time.

While I enjoyed the sights and sounds of Barcelona over the weekend, Phil Schwarzmann, a.k.a. the Voice of S60, was already back in Helsinki and was busy putting up the podcast we recorded on Thursday at the 3GSM congress. In the podcast we discuss the congress, the exhibition, S60 competition as well as my blog and a my latest book. The 14 minute podcast is available for download here.