Travelling with N96 - pleasure or pain?

"Is it possible to use a phone as a hardcore travel assistant which does basically everything for you?" This was the question before I went for a short holiday. Before the holiday started I created a quite long list what I could do with my phone when abroad (thanks to Petteri and Jouni for additional suggestions).

When I was driving in Spain and using Ovi Maps as a navigator, I totally lost my mind because N96 rebooted itself numerous times and Ovi Maps failed to give me good directions. I even buzzed about this. After the buzz, I started thinking that I shouldn't make that strong assumption, which is based on few failures. I decided to create a list of pleasures and pains about using N96 (or any device) as a travel assistant. I made this list during my holiday, without any further planning, so the list is authentic and not made up.

Like everybody knows, these things aren't black and white so it is little difficult to make a final decision. I thought that I'll give one point (+1) for each pleasure and one minus point (-1) for each pain and then sum them. If pleasure wins, then it is a pleasure to travel with N96 or if pain wins, then it is a pain travelling with N96. I'll also add some suggestions in the end which could help travelers (or frequent mobile phone users) in the future.

Test equipment

• Nokia N96 v.30.333
• Ovi Maps v3.01 09wk44 b01 with drive and walk license and downloaded map of Spain.
• A car
• A 31-year-old male

Pleasure

• Downloaded maps to your phone before travel.
• Got drive and walk guidance relatively cheaply, only 9,99€ to N96. Although this hasn't been advertised anywhere. I noticed this from AllAboutSymbian.com.
• Saved GPS coordinates to some pictures which I took.
• Sent an unique postcard with a picture taken with N96 using 3rd party software from Finnish Post Office.
• Transferred podcasts and music before the trip to the phone.
• Installed 3rd party software during the trip to get information about Alhambra. Download was done using bluetooth in Alhambra. More information about the software.

Picture 1 & 2. Information of Alhambra in your phone

• Used Opera Mini to cut down the amount transferred data while browsing abroad.
• Recorded my running routes using SportsTracker and didn't use any data connection. Uploaded them to SportsTracker site when I came back from holiday.

Picture 3. One recorded running route, used only GPS, no data connection.

Picture 4. Uploaded route in SportsTracker.

• Saved the place to Ovi Maps where I parked the car in Malaga.
• Ovi Maps walking guide worked in Malaga and I found the place where I parked the car.
• Saved my thoughts about this blog post to Notes on holiday.

Pain

• Sometimes Ovi Maps didn't find anything, re-booting helped.
• Ovi Maps drive guidance was guiding in Malaga differently than it was showing in the map. Guidance told "turn left" but map showed "turn right". This happened more than once.
• GPS signal lost three times during trip from Alhambra to Benalmadena. Phone was all the time in the same place. Restarting of Ovi Maps helped.
• While driving to back from Alhambra to Benalmadena, N96 restarted numerous times, something like 5-7. Luckily my wife was able to operate N96, otherwise it would have been really difficult and dangerous.
• Ovi Maps didn't find "Calle de Noruega" street in Benalmadena. It seems that Ovi Maps thinks it is "Calle Cinoroega" like seen in picture 5. Also "Calle Italia" should be "Calle de Noruega".
• Ovi Maps gave totally wrong driving guidance near where I was staying.

Picture 5. Map from Benalmadena where driving guidance in Ovi Maps didn't work so well.

• I noticed after the trip that some of the pictures didn't contain GPS coordinates, although I'm really sure I had that feature on.
• There weren't any good place for placing N96 in the car. This makes navigation more difficult.
• While I was driving, Ovi Maps showed useless information about roaming charges although I had accepted it previously.

Picture 6. Ovi Maps showing useless information while driving.

• While I was driving, Nokia Messaging popped up numerous times. I don't know what initiated this.

Picture 7. Nokia Messaging popped up while using Ovi Maps.

• Ovi Maps didn't seem to be accurate enough, if there were two (or more) ramps which were taking you off the highway, it wasn't clear which one to take. I've been using TomTom XL in Finland, and it guides you really clearly which ramp or lane to take.

Thoughts

• It would be really helpful if Nokia (or someone else) would be selling "one-size-fits-all-Nokias" car kits where one could place phone while driving. This could be also used for watching videos in the plane.
• There are still space to improve Ovi Maps' user experience.
• I think navigation using phone is little like comparing taking pictures with phone and taking pictures with "real" camera; it is in a way OK, but not really good.
• Search results in Ovi Maps aren't as good as in Google Maps. Biggest two problems with Google Maps is that you cannot download the maps to your phone and you can't get drive guidance to Nokia phones.
• As you can see, most of the issues were caused by Ovi Maps. I wasn't using the newest version, so I really hope it works better.
• I didn't use Foursquare or Gowalla during my holiday because I was lazy. I checked few times if something could be found from Foursquare, and it was basically empty. After the holiday, I noticed that Gowalla is more popular in Benalmadena area. Also Dopplr were quite empty, although I decided to add few hints there after the trip.
• When you are travelling battery consumption is really an issue. Luckily I had my Nokia DC-11 which gave the external push for phone's battery when needed. It would be really useful if one could define which features will be left on when battery is about to die, I mean now some Nokia devices have power saving option which dims the screen light, but it could be used for example shutting down Bluetooth, WiFi discovery, unused open applications, etc. and reserve the rest of the battery for the most important, e.g. sometimes for Ovi Maps.

So, here is my verdict: it is a pleasure to travel with N96 but Ovi Maps can cause you to lose your mind. What do you think? What kinds of experiences you've had with your personal travel assistant?

What if Nokia would offer an aggregate service which would combine all tracking services?

I've mentioned multiple times that popular SportsTracker will be introduced way or another in near future. I started thinking what if it would contain a feature which would allow users upload their information from other tracking services also?

I strongly believe that different tracking services will become more and more popular. I've been using SportsTracker for quite some time and report most of my sport activities. It is convinient, if you go jogging, you just carry your phone and it shows distance, your route etc. If you go to play football, you can report the time and date. Phone is always with you, so you don't need to log-in to computer to report these things. If you are using some heart rate monitoring, e.g. from Polar, you could upload this information after you've sent it to Polar's Personal Trainer.

You can ask why would users want to use SportsTracker if they are using Runkeeper on their iPhone? My answer is "their friends". It is common situation that I'm using SportsTracker, some of my friends are using Runkeeper, and some are using Polar's Personal Trainer etc. If there would be an easy way for aggregating this information, I bet that kind of service would have lots of users.

Now you ask why Nokia would do something like that? My answer is "to sell more phones and make profit". If an iPhone user is using already Nokia's popular service, he might choose Nokia phone next time. Services are, after all, one of the main focus area for Nokia.

There is a Finnish start-up called Heiaheia, which tries to aggregate different activities, but does this manually. I mean user needs to login, type his/her activity to service etc. This manual part is quite cumbersome and I keep wondering why would I type these things because they are already in my phone, device, or other service.

This kind of service doesn't need to focused on tracking sports, but it can be used for tracking your everyday life. You could track your holiday route, take pictures and it would be straight-away available for your friends. If you have old parents, you could see where they are at or where they are going. Of course there are lots of security and other issues, but I believe they could be handled.

What do you think, would this kind of service be a hit?

Ovi Maps vs. Google Maps

It's been a while since last blog post, or actually even longer than a while. I could give a blog post full of reasons, but I'm not. After all, when we started this blog, we agreed that we write stories that are interesting for us and if we have time.

Now to the real topic: Ovi Maps versus Google Maps. Like you probably know, Nokia announced some time ago that they are offering navigation for free starting right now with limited number of devices. They also promised that they will add the support to some older models as well as to all new phones shipping with Ovi Maps. Google is already offering free navigation to Android phones, and bunch of different location-based services to other phones.

I must agree with most of the people and say this is an interesting decision from Nokia. I'm guessing that they are trying to get some profit from in-device advertising as well as increased phone sales. In-device advertising is a challenge for both Nokia and Google and we (or at least I) haven't seen any good results from this. One could say the winner of this battle is the one who gets more users to the service and offers better search results. Good search results are vital part of the Ovi/Google Maps usage, because why to use a service, even for a navigation, if it doesn't find anything? This gave me an idea of comparing these two map products. I've been using both of them, so in the following tests, I'm re-creating some of my recent searches .

Test equipment:

• Nokia N96 (v30.333)
• Ovi Maps (v3.01 09wk44) (Not the newest version, v3.03, because it is not available for N96 but I'm assuming that both versions are using the same data.)
• Google Maps (v3.3.1 (#0))
• Location: Espoo, Finland. Near Helsinki (and Nokia HQ)

Test cases:

• R-Kioski (a popular kiosk)
• Apteekki (pharmacy)
• Nordea (a bank)
  
• Otto (a brand name for ATMs)
• K-Rauta (a hardware store)
• Rautia (another hardware store)
• Bauhaus (another hardware store)

Scoring:

• 1 point from a good result.
• ½ point from a result that could be improved.
• 0 points if there are no results.

1. Search - R-kioski

Picture 1. Ovi Maps doesn't recognize "r-kioski".

Picture 2. Google Maps shows the nearest R-Kioski.

Picture 3. You can all search results a list, nearest place is on top.

Picture 4. Google Maps, you can see search results also in the map.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps 1. It is really disappointing if you cannot find anything.

2. Search: Apteekki

Picture 5. Ovi Maps knows how to suggest search results.

Picture 6. Ovi Maps lists nearest results and also shows them in map (picture missing)

Picture 7. Ovi Maps shows coordinates, phone number and even weather of a search result. Phone number being one to most important.

Picture 8. For some reason Google Maps doesn't show the nearest pharmacies.

Result: Ovi Maps 1 - Google Maps ½. You shouldn't need to choose the nearest place by yourself, especially if you are in unfamiliar place.

3. Search: Nordea

Picture 9. Ovi Maps doesn't find a single Nordea from Finland, only ATMs in Estonia

Picture 10. Google Maps finds some Nordea's but not all, there are also places that doesn't have branches, only offices.

Picture 11. Nordea's listed. Results could be better.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps ½. Really poor results from Ovi Maps, but Google Maps could also improve.

4. Search: Otto

Picture 12. Ovi Maps suggesting results, actually nice and convenient.
Picture 13. Ovi Maps shows search results in map, just like described in picture 6.

Picture 14. Poor results from Google Maps, not even one real hit and others are totally wrong.

Result: Ovi Maps 1 - Google Maps 0. Totally wrong results give bad impression.

5. Search: K-Rauta

Picture 15. Ovi Maps doesn't find anything and suggest wrongly.

Picture 16. Also Google Maps shows phone number.

Picture 17. Google Maps shows sometimes also result's homepage.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps 1. Totally wrong results give bad impression.

6. Search: Rautia

Picture 18. No results when searching Rautia with Ovi Maps.

Picture 19. Google Maps finds "Rautia", but most probably doesn't show the nearest first.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps 1. No results, no points.

7. Search: Bauhaus

Picture 20. Ovi Maps suggest that I should head to Germany...

Picture 21. Google Maps shows reviews in some results.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps 1. Totally wrong results, no points.

Final result: Ovi Maps 2 - Google Maps 5. These result show that Google Maps is better in finding places, which makes sense because Google is so big in search area. This also indicates that Nokia needs to improve it's company database, because companies are usually searched; address, phonenumber, etc. I still keep on using both of them because in some cases Ovi Maps gives better results.

There are lots of areas that makes a difference when these two companies are fighting for the users and their money. Just to name few, these are:

• Sociality. Social services are also important in search business, because users want to see where their friends are and if they are suggesting some places. Google Maps has Latitude which shows where your friends are, but that's it. New version of Ovi Maps has Facebook-integration which seems interesting, but there needs to be more to come.
  
• Tracking. Nokia terminated it's successful Nokia Sportstracker but most probably will add similar features to Ovi Maps, or at least I hope so. Tracking is important for users who are exercising and how they are developing.
• Sharing data between computer and mobile phone. Most of the users are using Ovi Maps and Google Maps both with their computers and their mobile phones. This is why it important that one can store information using computer and then access the same information with mobile phone. Both companies are supporting this method, as long as you've signed in.
  
• Usability and ability to suggest results. Usability is really important in each service, also in Maps. If you are searching something based on the address, Ovi Maps suggests nicely different street addresses.
  

Picture 22. In Ovi Maps, you need to decide if you are searhing based on address or place.

Picture 23. Google Maps offers only one Search-possibility which makes searching sometimes easier.

Picture 24. Suggestion works nicely in with Google Maps, but it doesn't suggest street names, only recent searches and some commonly known places, e.g. kensington.

• Downloading maps. When you have your maps in your device, usage can be little faster but the data can be old which results as a poor results. Downloading maps beforehand to your device means that you don't need data connection which means your battery last longer. I hope Nokia would introduce a feature which allows downloading maps to your phone without Map Loader.
  

So there are lots of open questions who will be the winner in in-device advertising, but one thing is for sure; year 2010 will be interesting year in location-based services.

Broadcasting your life with Nokia viNe

Nokia announced viNe sometime ago. Someone could call it as a modified SportsTracker that gives you the opportunity to share the route you have traveled, pictures and videos you have taken, or songs you have listened. ViNe records your journey using GPS when it is available. If it is not available, viNe will connect last and current position with the shortest possible line.

1. Starting point.

2. ViNe saves the music you've listened and pictures and videos you've taken.

3. After you've accomplished your route, you can add tags to your viNe.

I'm not sure what one should call it, in a way it is a modified SportsTracker but it is also a subset of SportsTracker because the application doesn't offer as much training information as SportsTracker. Maybe viNe is a SportsTracker for an everyday user who is not interested in all the possible training information? You cannot for example specify type of workout and see as much information about your journey/training but the upload is much more convenient and you can add tags. ViNe shares your information to everyone and you cannot restrict this in any way. In SportsTracker you were able to restrict your audience. I think this is something that some users will not like.

Few other differences between SportsTracker and viNe are that in viNe you are able to move in the map. It doesn't utilize the map information that Maps is using but it caches the map information so it works quite fine. When you are viNing, you cannot see any details of your route, e.g. distance and speed that you can see when you are using SportsTracker.

When you upload your viNe it will go to two different places, to viNe and to SportsTracker. ViNe will also replace your SportsTracker user ID with Nokia Account user ID. This means that you will get rid of one useless user ID. ViNe probably tells you about this, but I didn't notice this and had some difficulties accessing SportsTracker before I realized that my user ID had changed. I think that this was a really good idea from Nokia. I hope this trend continues because nobody likes too many user IDs.

4. Your viNes are published to viNe -service.

5. Same time your viNes are published to SportsTracker -service.

I don't know what is the main idea behing viNe, and I haven't seen any discussion about this, although I haven't been searching so much. One idea that came to my mind is that Nokia tries to use social networks for modeling the world's most interesting places. This would be different approach than Google's Drive. Do you have any other ideas?

I first thought that viNe would have been introduced through Nokia Beta Labs like SportsTracker, but apparently Nokia thinks it is a finalized product. I would like to disagree with this because at least I have had some difficulties with it, e.g. it crashes quite often with my N96. I just updated my N96 to version 12.043. I hope viNe works better with this new software version.

Here is a list of bugs and some features I would like to see in the future:

• It tags only the first songs name and artist. (See picture 3.)
• Sometimes it tags city (Helsinki) but not always. It could also tag parts of the city like Punavuori, Ullanlinna and Kamppi.
• It could show album art of the listened music.

6. Album art is not shown.

• ViNe's internet service's search should work better. At the moment it is difficult to find anything or anybody.
• Could there be a way of following your friends?
• Could there be a possibility to restrict your audience?
• Could there be a possiblity to buy music that someone else has been listening in their viNes'?
• ViNe should automatically upload pictures and videos to Share on Ovi.
• Embedded widget could show only desired viNes, e.g. your own or your friends. Usually there are desired audience you want to share information with or follow.

7. Embedded viNe widget shows all the viNes.

• Could viNe be combined with FriendView? You could see where your friend has been or is at the moment?
• Could viNe updates be offered in RSS format?
• Could you send your viNe to some of your friend, e.g. "look at my cool journey"? This could be also available in mobile format.
• Could you provide more information during viNing, e.g. distance?
• Could viNe show a dotted line in saved journey when GPS hasn't been available?
• Could viNe use either cellular or WiFi positioning when GPS is not available?
• Is Nokia doing any co-operation with different heart rate monitoring companies, e.g. Polar or Suunto? This kind of co-operation would provide all the necessary information that you need when working out.

All in all this application seems interesting and I think I'll continue using both viNe and SportsTracker. You have to remember that viNe and SportsTracker are almost identical; viNe is basically a SportsTracker with a facelift. If you want to follow my viNes, search for teppoj.