Though Google Maps will always be the best option for maps out there, it hasn’t stopped other companies from attempting to make their own home grown map solutions. Take Apple for example. They decided to create their own maps solution back in 2012 when they released ios 6. However, that went quite badly, given that the maps didn’t have some of the features that Google Maps had and that the application would actually send people to the wrong destination instead of where they actually wanted to go. Despite this bad start, Apple continued to update their maps and have taken back some of that market share from Google. Another company that seems intent on doing this is Nokia, with their HERE maps.
HERE maps made its debut on Windows Phone back in 2012, giving the users of Microsoft’s mobile operating system an alternative to the built-in apps from Microsoft itself. It also had apps for both ios and Android. However, earlier this month, Nokia announced that it had a partnership with Samsung, whereby Nokia would provide its mapping service to Samsung users at no extra cost. The app was made available only for Samsung devices and could not be downloaded on any other Android devices. The app seems to be a good alternative to Google Maps simply because the app allows you to download entire apps for offline usage, whilst Google Maps will only let you download a small segment.
Today, Nokia has announced that the app works with a larger variety of Android handsets, meaning that users of devices made by other manufacturers can now download the app onto their phone. However, the app is still in beta, which means that there are bound to be issues with the app and should not be used without a backup maps solution, such as Google Maps itself. One of the issues that Nokia has said they’ve found with the app is that whenever a cleaning app is used on phones, the clearing out of caches will mean that navigation voices are deleted, though Nokia has stated that it’s working on a fix for this.
If you’re interested in the beta, head over to Nokia to download the app, though you’ll have to sideload the APK onto your phone. If you don’t know how to do that, Nokia has you covered.
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