back to article Readers rate Nokia's free Smart2Go satnav app

When Reg Hardware covered the no-show and then the late appearance of Nokia's free navigation software, Smart2Go, we invited readers to download the code and give it a test drive. Rather a lot of you did, and here's a selection of some of your experiences with the app on a range of handsets... Steve Smith First thing to get …

COMMENTS

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  1. James Srinivasan

    Very much beta

    Promises a lot but alas doesn't deliver. First installation attempt on my Orange c500 locked the phone solid, on second attempt realised I needed an active internet connection for the program to run (won't connect to GPRS automatically). Initial map download was 1MB (thankfully over ActiveSync) and placed me somewhere in Germany (I'm not). Woefully slow, user interface is exceedingly laggy and keeps wanting to talk to my (non-existant) GPS receiver. The UI is also rather non-standard (for Windows mobile anyway). You can't seem to enter text using the keypad but rather have to use an onscreen keyboard navigated by the joypad - sucks! And the operation of the soft buttons seems to be very inconsistent.

    Managed to supposedly get the UK maps on my mini-SD card but doesn't seem to include gazeteer so any location lookup requires data connection too. Large chunks of maps don't seem to be displayed and scrolling causes weird screen corruption. And it also seems to keep the backlight on even when I quit the app (trip to settings...power management fixes that).

    Gave it a spin on the Smartphone Emulator and while the speed and responsiveness improved the stability didn't. My advice would be to try it out on the emulator first (free dowload from Microsoft) before letting it anywhere near your phone.

    If I was feeling cynical I might suggest there's some dodgy Symbian emulation layer knocking about...

    In summary: I'm sticking to Google Maps

  2. Rob

    Mac users?

    I'd love to try this out but I frankly refuse to download all the maps over GPRS, and the maploader application isn't out for macs.

    Granted I could fire up bootcamp to run it but why do I want to restart my computer - twice - just to install a map on my phone?

    Surely if all it is doing is downloading some data, it could be done in a platform agnostic way. Or even over HTTP or FTP, since we're having online apps hurled at us from every direction.

    Along with the BBC's obsession for MS-centric data transmission methods, I'm getting a bit narked!

  3. Thom

    Where to DL for Nokia devices....

    When I tried to DL from the www.smart2go.com website I DL'ed a .sis file that could not install on my Nokia N80ie. However, I visited http://mobilesearch.nokia.com/index.html and DL'ed the app from there and in installed and ran VERY well. My install took about 7 min. It seems strange but after the install ALL of my apps and even the OS seems snapier !?!?!?!? Very strange.

  4. Nicholas Wright

    Actually - was quite impressed

    Downloaded application for N73 on the PC.

    Installed via PC Suite.

    Ran application, agreed to license.

    I noticed it wanted to connect to the internet - no way hosé.

    Program carried on fine with a high level view of Europe - sweet.

    Downloaded MapLoader.

    It had a whinge about my phone memory not being big enough, but I ploughed on and I think it understood I wanted it installed to the 1GB SD.

    Blinking hell....40minutes later... finally... the England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland maps were installed.

    Re-ran application. Did it find my address? Yes - and it even found my house on a crescent.

    Tried planning a route to a random location to the right on the map (ended up being Slough, well I guess someone has to go there.), and it provided me with a list of directions.

    I now have a free application on my phone, so that if I'm ever lost in someone barely civilized I can find my way to somewhere more civilized. If in London, I can now get the quickest route between the Tube station and Tottenham Court Road.

    I'm not sure what you would pay for in the application? But I think an N73 screen is too small for in-car navigation.

  5. Jon Fitt

    Good so far

    I agree with Steve Smith's review of the software. I have had almost exactly the same experience he has on my Vodafone Hermes/TyTn.

    It's an excellent product for people who are travelling to a location which they do not own TomTom (or equivalent) maps for. You can preload the map and pay for 30 days navigation and you're all set. Really useful for anyone who's ever looked at buying extra maps for other packages for a short trip and recoiled at the price.

    That said I have had no luck getting MapLoader to work, I get "failed to connect to server" errors. I also noticed that the quality of the Berlin map which came up as default was much higher than the UK map, especially in the POI department, could this be to sell the city guides? Hopefully both these problems will disappear.

    All in all an excellent product and I hope enough people buy the premium content to keep this product alive and frequently updated.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Works on Nokia 5500

    Installed quickly on my 5500, perhaps 90 seconds.

    Loads fine, tries to connect over bluetooth but not having a GPS receiver I can't actually say it's working properly.

    Still, it didn't crash and doesn't appear sluggish.

  7. David Burton

    S60 V3 only :(

    I tried installing it on a lowly Nokia 6680, and it didn't work. The Series 60 download presumably is version 3 only, which would explain why it doesn't work on the earlier N-series and older Series 60 phones...

    It's slightly frustrating that Nokia have released an application for a completely competing platform (Windows Mobile), but not seen fit to support one of their own older ones...

  8. David

    a number of phones removed from list

    I guess there must be some problems with certain phones as the list has been reduced to about a third of it's original length.

    All the Windows phones seemed to have been removed for now apart from the Generic Windows Mobile version.

    Once they have most of the bugs sorted out it should be a great little app for us all, and a great little incentive for buying Nokia.

  9. Jonathan Greene

    Did a video walk-through...

    I've been playing with it for a few days and think it has a lot of potential... Made a video walk-through <http://tinyurl.com/2z4358> as well so people who have yet to install can still check it out in some greater detail.

    I'm on the verge of paying the upgrade to take advantage of the deeper nav, but really need a sirf iii gps to make it more powerful. My sirf i is constantly dropping off.

  10. Steve Smith

    Data useage

    Did a trip of 100 miles today using the system. Worked well, no real hangups. It got a bit confused in one village but my co-worker had a similar problem with his TOMTOM so may be a map issue. Only complaint really was that it downloaded about 2.5Mb during the trip even though I had already downloaded full UK maps onto the card overnight. If it does 2.5Mb a trip (each way?) it could get steep, especially when roaming.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's nice but doesn't seem to work with built-in GPS

    I found it works beautifully on a Nokia E61, with an external Holux GPSlim 240 bluetooth GPS mouse.

    I also installed the "WM5 Generic" edition on a HP hw6945 device which has a built-in GPS receiver that can be addressed via Com7. The Nokia software seems to be lacking the option of using built-in GPS and specifying a serial port for it.

  12. Ned Collyer

    smart2go on an emulator?

    What are the steps required to run smart2go on an emulator?

  13. Chris Whatmore

    Nokia E61 + Mac + wi-fi works fine

    In response to Rob's query about smart2go and Macs, the problem pretty much goes away if you have a wi-fi-enabled handset like the Nokia E61.

    It's not totally plain sailing, in that the app downloaded to the phone over my wi-fi/DSL home network but for some reason wouldn't install. However, downloading smart2go to the Mac and then bluetoothing it over to the phone worked fine. Once the program was installed, there was no problem at all downloading the map data directly over the wi-fi link.

    If your phone doesn't have wi-fi then yes, this and many other navigation/location based services are going to be a problem for Mac users. Yet another reason to look forward to flat-rate mobile data packages.

  14. Rob

    Re Nokia E61 + Mac + wi-fi works fine

    I have an N80 with wifi, can I download the WHOLE map to the phone over wifi in one go? i.e. with one command, not something hacky like "scroll around the whole map area" or anything like that.

    If so then fine, but if I have to fiddle and mess around then it's a shoddy piece of work by nokia

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