Apple's iOS 6 Maps app has received so many complaints and been the butt of so many jokes that you'd think Nokia could capitalize on Cupertino's fail by releasing a stunning maps app to dominate the iOS space. No such luck. Nokia's Here Maps is a mess.
It's not as if Nokia doesn't know mapping. It's already one of the biggest mapping companies next to Google, with a huge suite of mapping content and tools. When it announced an iOS map app earlier this month, beating Google's highly anticipated Maps iOS to the punch, it seemed like a no-brainer. But you might as well keep waiting for Google's app, because Here Maps is a wreck.
For some strange reason, the maps are blurry, giving the app an unfinished look. As for the menu buttons and app navigation experience, Here Maps feels stale and outdated. Some of the most popular and successful iOS apps shine based on design, but Here Maps seems stuck in a Symbian past.
As for the content, Here Maps provides only satisfactory driving, walking and public transit directions. It found most of the locations I was asking for, though it occasionally needed very specific detail. For example, "sf DMV" gave me no results whereas "San Francisco DMV Office" worked.
Besides looking bad, the app's biggest problem is the bugginess -- I got error messages like "Sorry. Routes aren't available just now. Please try later" many times. When I tried to use features like turn-by-turn audio directions (a feature that, oddly, is only available for walking, not driving) downloading the audio didn't work. When I tried to save a map area for offline viewing, that download failed as well. At one point, the app flashed incessantly between the map and list directions for a good five seconds.
What's strange about the iOS app experience is that it also falls short of Nokia's Here browser experience, which is quite enjoyable. Nokia clearly has the data and content to power great mapping experiences. The company has partnered with tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and Oracle to provide mapping content. It just doesn't know how to translate it into a useful iOS app.
On the Here browser experience, you can view multiple public transit routes. Yet on the Here Maps iOS app, you only get one, which can be frustrating in cities like San Francisco with more than one way to get around. But hey, at least Here Maps has public transit directions, which Apple Maps doesn't. Beyond that, however, Here Maps isn't any better of an experience than just using Apple's built-in experience.
Nokia also has stuffed in some other features, like Collections, that lets you store your favorite locations for easy access across platforms. You'll need to sign up for a Nokia account or via Facebook to get this feature, though. It's potentially a useful feature, especially if you're planning a trip and you want to store all of the addresses for on-the-go access. You can also opt to see traffic incidents on the map, somewhat like how social navigation app Waze works. But the app warns that traffic view is still in beta, so the accuracy could be off. And as noted earlier, other features like turn-by-turn audio directions -- did I mention they're only for walking?! -- and saving maps for offline access failed to work in my testing.
If you're looking for an Apple Map's replacement, you won't find it in Nokia's Here Maps app. I still prefer using the Google Maps browser experience, and there are plenty of well-designed, third-party apps that provide driving, walking and public transit directions. If the Here Maps iOS experience could mirror the experience of using the Here desktop experience, Nokia would have a much better chance at dominating the maps space. For now, let's just wait for Google to release its iOS app.
