All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
Ovi Maps hits 3.4 - in beta form - Nokia nail it...
Published by Steve Litchfield at 9:23 UTC, February 26th 2010
Just released this morning (see my 'Install diary' below) is Ovi Maps 3.4 (build 91, if you're being fussy). This follows up the formal release of v3.3, which introduced the new interface and free worldwide voice navigation. In brief, Ovi Maps is claimed to be faster and more accurate, and, as reported below, Nokia certainly seemed to have made big strides in this area - v3.4 is hard to criticise in the performance department now. It also adds Wi-Fi positioning to the many ways location is determined, though it will take a while before Nokia's servers build up enough data for this to be useful. Read on...
Official changelog:
- Improved positioning speed and accuracy
- Map zooming with faster speed
- Improved search for cities with zoom out to city level
Compatibility hasn't been widened (yet), it still only works with the same dozen or so S60 3rd Edition FP2 and 5th Edition phones originally quoted, i.e. E52, E55, E72, 6710 Navigator, 6730 Classic and X6, N97 Mini, N97 (v2.xxx onwards*), 5230, 5800 XM (v3.1xxx onwards*)
Install 'diary'...
It's a whopping 9MB download, mind you, and you can't "Delete" the previous Maps 3.3 using the 'Organise' system, so I'm trying the installation 'on top' by copying the SIS file to my N97's mass memory, installing from there and then seeing how much extra precious C: space has been lost. It also takes an age to install, hence this blog-like running commentary - there's plenty of downtime!
OK, even starting with 18MB free space on disk C:, the installation of Maps 3.4 failed with 'Disk full, insufficient memory'. You have been warned. I'm now going to delve into the cache and temp folders to clear space and try again. Can't help muttering though. Maybe I should switch back to the N97 mini, which at least has extra capacity on disk C:
It turns out that from Settings>Application Mgr, I can uninstall Ovi Maps (3.3) after all... I now have 31MB free on disk C: - which should be enough. Gulp. Trying again!....
Installation succeeded, with the total 'hit' on disk C: being exactly 1MB more than inflicted by v3.3. I'm now taking v3.4 out for a test drive around Berkshire 8-)
Ovi Maps version 3.4 - Nokia nail it...
Nokia do have this habit of using using the general public as beta testers for their firmware, but in this case this is clearly labelled 'Beta' - ironically, since v3.4 is not only rock solid, but delivers on its promise of better performance - on my test drive, screen and position refreshes were much faster. For v3.3, what I think was happening was that all the NMEA position updates from the GPS chip were being processed in parrot fashion, meaning that on the slowish N97 (and sister devices) it took a few seconds before Ovi Maps had caught up with your actual (latest) position. With v3.4, the extra speed tweaks help to catch up much faster - hopefully there's a healthy degree of common sense being implemented in the code too, throwing away position updates that are more than a couple of seconds old.
Even with the insensitive N97 GPS antenna, I was getting near perfect positioning and real time navigation.
New for v3.4 is a new positioning method, 'Wi-Fi/Network', which triangulates your position Maps Booster/Google Maps-style and adds this position fix into the mix as well. That's the theory anyway - this is just the start of Nokia gathering router position data from user phones (privacy advocates might like to ranting now, but I don't think it'll be a problem - the networks know roughly where you are by triangulation already, and have done for years). It'll take a while before Nokia's servers have enough data to be able to serve up position information - i.e. to go the other way around.
As a result, the old 'satellite status' (green bar) indicator has been removed, since it is seen (by Nokia) as largely redundant, GPS now being only one of three major ways of determining position (GPS, Assisted-GPS/cell towers, Wi-Fi). Maybe a new multi-tier indicator is needed for the future? 8-)
Great job, Nokia, overall. Now get a version of 3.4 rolled out for S60 3rd Edition FP1 (and remaining FP2) devices please - there are millions of N95 and E71 owners champing at the bit to savour the free navigation experience!
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 26 Feb 2010
News Discussion
make five years ahead of its competitor
I'll have a go driving the streets of southern berkshire ....
Sigh. Same thing. Give me some credit. One of the idiosyncrasies of Symbian OS. You'll get used to it.
"Can I delete v3.3 after installing the new version?"
No, you'd have to do what I did and delete it FIRST.
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Can I delete v3.3 after installing the new version?
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Worked! Except for the fact after using it it left my GPS indicator on (which can only assume it's left my GPS on) which is going to drain my battery an AWFUL lot... So back to 3.03
Works smoothly though
You cannot judge the sensitivity of the GPS antenna of the N97 on the basis of software like OVI Maps that put the position always on a street and that, in case of navigation, tends to follow the original itinerary for a while if you change directions.
Try instead Garmin Mobile (v5.5 or later) enabling “position in GPS coordinates” instead of “always on a route” (I do not know the right words in the English version). In that case, you can see that the GPS is very sensitive and can “hear” immediately all the changes of your direction.
I have both on my device and I saw this huge difference. Anyway, I prefer OVI Maps because it is much faster than Garmin for what concerns the re-calculations and for the management of the maps.
P.S.: I do not use neither the AGPS nor WiFi or web options on my N97
Keeps failing every time.
And in between, tells me 3.03 is still installed, do I wish to overwrite... then of course when it fails, it's NOT 3.03 left on, it's back to the older 3.01 version.
Then I try again, and it tells me 3.04 is already installed, do I wish to overwrite...
And then fails again - no matter how many re-boots I've tried.
Not good
(Nokia E72 here)
I installed v3.04 straight over the top of v3.03 without issues. Also, it didn't seem to eat up much more space from the C: drive (less that 0.5Mb for my install).
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Originally Posted by spaceprobe
Makes a change but installed no problem onto my 5800 which had 14 mb space left. The whole set up looks very good and impressive. We just need a better range of car holders now and ones that allow you to connect to external power since the sat nav eates the battery.
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http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22814
As cheap as it gets, but it works perfect for the 5800... And all buttons etc. are also still funtional with this one !
Also my position seems to be worse now when I'm indoors without GPS signal. It shows approximate position with a big red circle, but I'm nowhere inside that circle.
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Originally Posted by Artz
One new thing I noticed. It seems that version 3.4 installed a new positioning method called Wi-Fi/Network. I guess that will help the positioning, so no need for Map Booster any more.
Also my position seems to be worse now when I'm indoors without GPS signal. It shows approximate position with a big red circle, but I'm nowhere inside that circle. |
Regards
Neil
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Originally Posted by krisq
Yeah, I noticed new method too. It constantly switches between Wifi and 3G so you better have flat rate data plan.
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Jon
The phone worked out (roughly) where I am, indoors with the curtains closed, pretty quickly. Won't get a chance to actually try it out outdoors before tomorrow though.
Julie
Looking very nice. The view options have been rejigged too (cogs on the map view)
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