Battle of the Maps - Revisited

Published by David Gilson at 14:50 UTC, January 21st 2010

As in the original battle of the maps, we'll look at five key areas: Mapping views looks at which application has the most detailed maps. Pre-loading looks at how easy it is to get mapping data to your phone before you'll need it in the field. Discovery & search looks at how well each application helps to you find and explore locations. Sharing & Synchronising looks at how easily you can get landmarks exchanged between your phone and the cloud, and then share them with others. Navigation, as you might expect, assesses how accurately you can pinpoint your location and make your way to your destination.

Mapping Views

Both Ovi and Google will display a standard map view and a satellite photo view. Unfortunately, the resolution of the Ovi satellite photos is too low to be useful. However, Google satellite photos are of  such a high resolution that you can recognise individual buildings and road markings. Meanwhile, Ovi has an added 3D terrain view. Although, considering that the primary usage for these applications is probably street navigation, I think the terrain height information is of limited use, especially since it is unquantified.

WINNER
Google Maps wins with the highest resolution satellite photos.

Pre-loading

Both Google and Ovi will fetch map images from the internet on the fly. In fact, this is the only way that you can use Google Maps. However, Ovi Maps does allow you to pre-load maps with the (Windows and Mac) Nokia Maps Loader, which can be a great time and money saver. What's more, if Nokia Maps Loader is not supported in your operating system, you can download Nokia Maps files directly here. Although, Google Maps does cache map images, to a degree, within a session. Therefore, it is possible to theoretically pre-load Google Maps via your home WiFi before you go out, but it is a rather impractical solution and you have to keep the application running.

WINNER
Ovi Maps' pre-loading saves you time and money.

Discovery & Search

As part of the preloaded packs in Ovi Maps, it is possible to overlay icons for all sorts of services that you might be looking for while you're out and about. However, in my anecdotal research, this data is largely out of date and incomplete. This may improve with the introduction of "Ovi Prime Places", a service that invites businesses to add themsleves as points of interest in the Ovi Maps database. Although, it has yet to be seen how quickly this will be adopted by businesses, and how long it would take to match the comprehensive database of Google Search. To help make up for Nokia's own map data, Ovi Maps 3.3 now has Michelin and Lonely Planet guides, along with an events guide and location-dependant weather forecasts.

In contrast, as you might expect from Google, you can easily and accurately search for specific places, because Google has constantly up to date information based on its web search business. Simply searching for something like "Restaurants" will give you a map full of search results. Not only are there location details there, but there are also user contributed reviews.

The gap between Google and Ovi is now less with the additions in Ovi Maps 3.3, but Google is still dominant with its wealth of search results.

WINNER
Google's existing strength in the search business wins the day.

Sharing & Synchronising

Ovi Maps is out of the gates first, offering you quick and easy two way synchronisation between your phone and the Ovi cloud. Your landmarks are viewable on your phone and the web. Both ends are updated as soon as you quit or restart the mobile application.

Google Maps (as of version 3.3) allows creation, and two way synchronisation, of "starred places". Users can also create "layers" (landmarks, lines and/or shapes) on the Google Maps website which are available to the mobile client in a read-only form. Apart from the the first time you synchronise Google Maps Mobile with Google's servers, there is longer a way to access Ovi Maps landmarks in Google Mobile Maps. In principle, users should be able to send locations to and from the address book, but in practice this rarely works, which both applications should be criticised for, as both applications could complement each other.

On the sharing side, Ovi has the perfect platform for sharing and collaborating with its "Good Things" service, but at the time of writing, anything shared in Good Things only exists on the web. On first impressions, Google Maps seems to have a slight edge, by allowing you to publish your layers. However, user-created public layers are not available on the mobile application. The only public layers available to Google Maps Mobile are so-called "Favourite Places" layers. You soon find that "Favourite Places" only covers selected capital cities around the world. What's more, favourite places in each city are grouped under the individuals who made them, and those individuals are limited to celebrities. I think this is a useless way of doing things for a number of reasons. Firstly, if you're looking for new places to go, you need to search by the type of place you want. Secondly, if you are a celebrity of some measure, it doesn't automatically make your landmarks more interesting, and you could have a conflict of interest, due to the attention that your reputation would inevitably attract.

This leaves Google Maps in the same state as Ovi Maps. Both have two way synchronisation of landmarks. Both suffer from having user contributed content locked to the web, which is of no use when you're out and about deciding where to go.

DRAW
Google and Ovi are evenly matched

Navigation

In terms of navigation modes, both applications offer pedestrian directions, although Ovi Maps now adds voice guidance to this. Road navigation is where the major difference is now. With the release of Ovi Maps 3.3 everyone has full Sat-Nav-like voice-guided road navigation free of charge. This is a huge game changer, not just for this comparison, but for the whole market.

Future versions of Google Maps Mobile may include the same type of navigation, depending on the country concerned, but for the time being the best Google has to offer S60 drivers is an overhead route view, and traffic congestion updates via its layers system.

Both Google Maps and Ovi Maps can track your location, even if your phone doesn't have a GPS receiver, by triangulating your position relative to the nearest cell towers, giving your position to within a 1000 meter radius. Android phones with Google Maps enjoy the benefit of a digital compass, but support for compass-equippeded S60 phones is sadly missing. Therefore, you have to turn to Ovi Maps if automatic map rotation is important to you.

When it comes to accuracy, either application is only going to be as accurate as the GPS receiver in the handset. However, I observed in my tests that Google Maps updates your location with a greater frequency than Ovi Maps, which does indeed increase the accuracy of your position on the map. Slower location updates lead to jumps and poor extrapolated guesses of where you might be. For example, while you are indeed a good driver, Ovi Maps will display you cutting a street corner in such a way that would probably get you arrested if you'd really driven like that!

WINNER
With a free for all Sat-Nav experience, Ovi Maps has to win here.

Conclusion

A DRAW!

So there we have it, in the original Battle of the Maps, I said Ovi Maps had potential to be superior to Google Maps if only Nokia realised and exploited that potential. With the release of Ovi Maps 3.3, they have certainly gone a long way towards this. Google Maps certainly has advantages for pedestrian urban explorers, primarily based on faster search and location fixes. Although, for when you're on a planned journey where you'll be driving (or walking) and pre-loading your maps, the free-for-all Sat-Nav experience now offered by Ovi Maps is the obvious choice.

David.R.Gilson for All About Symbian, 21^st January 2010
You can find me at my blog and on twitter, @davidgilson.

Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rafe satellite imagery, but it will take time and I think Google will retain an advantage here for the forseeable future. * **

* As long as there is a reasonable data connection

** For guided Navigation, applies to North America only.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suyogmh @David, I dont think in Syncing content to cloud Google and OVI are matched. OVI has edge since it does sync routes also which are good if you pre-plan your trip in night on your pc/mac and then just sync to your OVI maps in mobile. Also Google "starred" items sync seems to be unstable, and its relation with My Maps in google is not well designed. For me right now with free navigation OVI maps beats Google by huge margin.

Thanks for that comment :)

I haven't noticed any problems with Starred sync. I also haven't been able to test the route sync on Ovi, although you can sync route like displays in Google Maps, but only from the web to the handset, not two way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidgilson Hi again, Just thought I'd add my anecdote on how Google satellite images can be helpful. I live in an inner-city area in the UK, and I don't drive. A while ago, I was planning a trip to a retail estate just out side of the city, and I couldn't get accurate information about where exactly the bus-stops were. By using Google satellite photos, I actually followed the surrounding roads and found the road-markings for the bus stop.

Nice idea but unfortunately very unreliable. As Rafe mentioned about POIs not being 100% accurate, but what about aerial images? I look at my house and it shows it pre-extension, a car outside that I sold in 2003 and a back garden that is a historical record before I had it landscaped in 2002.

New roundabouts, junctions and and road markings have been installed, a new road built nearby and new buildings have been built on open space since then. Google aerial images are pretty damn poor in that respect.

Oh, and the image shows the sun shining, that's wrong too...... ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by KPOM I recently sold my last Nokia phone, but two questions I have for those who still have theirs are how good Ovi Maps directions are for tasks other than driving, and how well it integrates with other apps? With my Nexus One, I clicked on an address that I had entered into a calendar. It brought up Google Maps Navigation, at which point I was able to pull up either driving or public transportation directions to that address. The public transit directions were pretty accurate, and I was impressed by how well integrated the calendar and map programs were. Granted, I'm in the US, where Google Maps Navigation is strongest.

In the US where Google Maps Navigation works at all. I tried to look at Google maps today whilst out horseriding. Yet again no map tile loaded and I got a stupid pile of stripes. Forget it it's so completely lame.

Ovi maps navigation allows selction of destination from maps, history or search. Search brings up a screen full of options including transport. Or just put in free text and it goes and find. It's integrated with the Search function that Nokia introduced a couple of years ago.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered In the US where Google Maps Navigation works at all. I tried to look at Google maps today whilst out horseriding. Yet again no map tile loaded and I got a stupid pile of stripes. Forget it it's so completely lame. Ovi maps navigation allows selction of destination from maps, history or search. Search brings up a screen full of options including transport. Or just put in free text and it goes and find. It's integrated with the Search function that Nokia introduced a couple of years ago.

Thanks. You sound British. Were you using the phone in the US or UK?

Anyway, are you using this from Ovi Maps itself or from another application? Again, I don't have my N97 anymore to be able to check for myself, but does the Search feature integrate with Contacts, Calendar, or other built-in apps? For example, can I click on an address in my contact book, or in a calendar entry, and have it automatically search for GPS directions or transportation options?

Anyway, if you were in the US, did you get good transportation options? When I used early versions of Ovi Maps 3, I noticed that I got decent driving directions, but that POI were more limited. Also, how quickly is it getting a lock, and how well is AGPS working? Again, I noticed that Garmin XT usually locked faster than Ovi Maps, so hopefully this has been improved.

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