Will Maps Give Nokia A New Life?

With the fiasco that was the launch of Apple Maps, many players stepped up to take advantage of the situation. Unsurprisingly – or surprisingly, depending on where you stand – Nokia was one of those who was aggressive in promoting their own maps. Can’t really blame them.

Nokia Here Website

Nokia has been put on deathwatch by so many people so many times, but it has managed to hobble along, and just like the old battle-scarred fish named Gill in Finding Nemo, Nokia is not going to go away without a fight. Or at least a semblance of one.

It even went as far as to release an iOS map app named Here.

Reception

According to the NYT, upon release, Here quickly rose to the number 4 spot on the most downloaded apps list. On the same day. While that is rather impressive, what followed was not so good for Nokia. The next day, the average rating of the app was a measly 2.5 stars.

User mainly express dissatisfaction about:

• Aesthetics
• Wrong information such as establishments out of business
• Sluggish response

A more objective point-of-view comes from TUAW, The Unofficial Apple Weblog. While the reviewer starts with calling Here “a swing and a miss”, he did say that he didn’t find any egregious errors as he did with Apple Maps. He went as far as to encourage people to try it out.

My experience

Of course, I had to give the Nokia map a run for myself. I have to agree with TUAW that it is more functional than Apple Maps when it first came out. It also didn’t give me too hard a time finding locations around me, and the routes offered were correct.

Nokia Here Route

However, I also have to say that I do not care much for the presentation. While I am not big on design, I just can’t see why I would use Nokia’s Here as my default map app.

The verdict

I guess it’s pretty obvious at this point. If Nokia was banking on Here to give them a new life, then they might very well be deadpooled soon.

Have you tried Here? How was your experience?