Yesterday, a Saturday, was a hectic day for me. As the unofficial family driver (my wife drives too), it was my honourable task to haul us all around Lagos, from Ilupeju to Surulere to Gbagada to Omole. It looked like a promising day.

It also looked like a good opportunity to try out the popular mobile navigation application, Garmap for Mobile.

Did it deliver? Impressively! While I was familiar with most of the places we went to yesterday, that familiarity also helped evaluate how detailed and accurate Garmap is. Believe me when I say that Garmap provides accurate directions.

Even better, I observed that Garmap calculates the most direct routes possible, keeping you on major roads as much as possible. This way, it is difficult to get lost. If you make a wrong turn, Garmap re-calculates your route and gives you a fresh set of instructions to get you to your destination.

In addition, the voice guidance was so good that I had no need to look at the display of the phone. Garmap is so accurate that it gives directions to exit or enter service lanes on point! We had a taste of this a couple of times along Ikorodu road.

There was one location I didn’t have a good grasp of at Surulere, but Garmap proved effective, effortlessly piloting us through roundabouts and side streets. All I had to do was type in the street address and search. Garmap got us to our destination nicely.

My wife, who is not exactly a mobile phone person, is excited. She’s been telling everyone how wonderful this application is. As someone involved in marketing for her employers she thinks Garmap for Mobile is a must-have for those who are constantly on the move. I agree. Oh, and she’s already looking to replace her dumbphone with an S60 smartphone so she can use Garmap.

By the way, Alireta is giving away a free Garmap for Mobile application (full licence) if you purchase an S60 or Windows Mobile smartphone from them. Call 08084391076 if interested. Alireta Mobile is a delivery service and will deliver your order to your home or office same day or within 24 hours, depending on the time you place your order.

Finding points of interests works well too. Whether its a food outlet, fuel station, educational institution, or religious organisation, the application presents you with a list of such points near you – and that can include even those that are 500 km way from you.

If you need to find your way around Lagos and other major cities in Nigeria regularly, it is my informed opinion that you cannot go wrong with Garmap for Mobile.

Earlier on, I took a quick look at Nokia Maps 3.0. Next up is a brief look at Garmap for Mobile, another mobile navigational application that was around weeks ahead of Nokia Maps (contrary to Nokia’s claims to being the first mobile navigation service in Nigeria).

Garmap for Mobile provides street maps for Lagos, FCT Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Warri, and Ota amongst others. The application is available for purchase and installation on Micro SD card. Installation was pretty straightforward, and activation occured over-the-air (OTA) in a matter of minutes. I am running it on the E75, the very same device on which I have Nokia Maps 3.0, making for very good comparisons.

Features on Garmap for Mobile include:

• 3D map view (in Navigate view only)
• Day view and Night view
• On-screen Speed display during navigation
• Where Am I? Presents nearest address, nearest intersection, hospital, police station, and fuel station, current location in terms of latitude and longitude, elevation, and presents option to save this info – all on a screen
• Data Management: feature to track your movements (option to disable)
• Map/Satellite/Terrain modes
• Emergency Contact: a number you can quickly SMS your GPS co-ordinates to in an emergency
• My Contacts: allows you to assign a GPS position to phonebook contacts and/or call them from within Garmap
• Location messaging: Send your exact location in GPS coordinates to another GSM phone
• Recent Finds i.e. history
• Search places and addresses i.e. points of interests
• Voice Guidance, including turn-by-turn directions
• Route simulation: View route and destination on map before embarking on the journey
• Weather forecasts

My personal observation so far is that Garmap has more details on its maps than Nokia Maps 3.0. Having said that, there are streets that are listed on Nokia Maps that are not on Garmap for mobile, and vice-versa.

Though my initial impression is that Garmap for Mobile packs in more value, it may be best to wait till I have put both competing applications through their paces.

Screenshots:

Navigate: 3D View

Jibowu junction in 2D map view

Search results for air transportation facilities in Lagos

Murtala Muhammed International Airport

Adekunle Intersection of the 3rd mainland Bridge

Disclosure: I work for Alireta Nigeria Limited, an authorised dealer of Garmap for Mobile. Yet, I seek to present unbiased reviews in this first impression, comparisons and other reviews of Garmap and other mobile navigation services.

If you are of the opinion that I have been biased, please state so and point to errors in my review to illustrate your point.

There has been a lot of noise about mobile maps and navigational aids of recent – plus there seems to be a face-off between Garmap for mobile and Nokia Maps here in Nigeria.

Yesterday, I gave Nokia Maps a go on the E75 QWERTY smartphone. The version that came built-in on the phone is pretty useless, offering very little besides major highways. What I did was initiate an upgrade to Nokia Maps 3.0 via PC.

The Nokia Maps Updater is available for download to PC at http://europe.nokia.com/explore-services/maps/download. I installed the application, connected the E75 to PC via USB cable and initiated the update.

In a few minutes, I had Nokia Maps 3.0 on the smartphone. Apparently, the service is no longer restricted to just the E71 and the Navigator series.

Things Get Better…
Nokia Maps 3.0 has more detailed maps and features for Nigeria. The application presents a signifacant level of street names and directions. Other features include:

• 3D maps
• My location
• Traffic info
• Map/Satellite/Terrain modes
• Favourites
• History
• Map Screenshot (allows you to take screenshots of the map on the screen)
• Search places and addresses i.e. points of interests
• Voice Guidance

Here are screenshots of various locations in Lagos:

3D view of Jibowu Intersection at Yaba

Search results for airport/helipad facilities in Lagos

3D view of OAS helicopter Services at Maryland, Ikeja

Adekunle Intersection of the 3rd mainland Bridge

I’ll be sure to try out the Drive & Walk feature with voice guidance over the next one month and do a mini-review thereafter.

Members of the MobilityNigeria team were at the Opebi base of JEJ Engineering, the country representatives for Garmap for Mobile, a navigational application with Nigeria street maps. Yomi wrote a a news item on the introduction of Garmap for Mobile in Nigeria.

One of the highlights of our visit was the demonstration of the navigation application on a Symbian-powered smartphone. Our initial impressions of the application based on the little time we spent with it are good.

First up, we noticed how simple it is to get the application up and running on the phone – a great plus for the application.

The next thing we are particularly impressed about is the user interface. The user interface, for the short time we spent with the application seemed intuitive, but we will give our final verdict on that after taking it through its paces in real life use. One thing is for sure, Garmap for Mobile got a lot of eye candy.

The application locked to our position easilly. We also tested Points Of Interests (POIs) on the application, and it delivered with no stress, identifying eateries, hotels all over the Opebi and Maryland areas.

At this point it is worth mentioning that JEJ Engineering has decided to send MobilityNigeria a complimentary copy of their streetmap application for us to review.

I must say that this gesture is commendable, and we look forward to having more mobile application developers and manufacturers borrow a leaf from JEJ Engineering/Garmap.

Our review (with pictures and videos) will be up as soon as we get the review copy promised us and put it through its paces.

Garmin’s Garmap for Mobile is now available with streetmaps of major cities in Nigeria, including: Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Warri, Otta, among others.

Here are more features:

• 9,800km of routable map data
• Over 8,800 points of interest (POIs)
• Street maps for Lagos, FCT Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Warri, and Ota amongst others
• Turn-by-turn voice prompts
• Route simulation: Ability to simulate route and view destination on map before embarking on the journey
• Weather forecast: Ability to check five day weather forecasts destinations and over 5000 cities worldwide
• Flight schedule and status: Access flight details for many major airlines
• Points of Interest dialing: Choose from over 8800 Points of Interest and call a point of interest (such as a restaurant or coffee shop) using the phone feature.
• Location messaging: Send a location message to another Nigerian mobile phone, detailing their exact location in GPS coordinates. If the receiving mobile phone also has Garmap For Mobile installed the message translates into a destination point and allows the receiver to navigate easily and quickly to that point.
• Panic button: Automatically fires off an urgent location message to up to three emergency contacts whenever the ‘#’ key is depressed for more than 3 seconds on certain Nokia and Samsung phones.
• “Panoramio”, a tool that allows consumers to access user-generated content that has been uploaded to the Web.
• On board user’s manual and troubleshooting information: The user’s manual and troubleshooting information sits on the application on your phone, so help is wherever you are.
• SD card and Installation disk: The application comes on a 2gig SD card and an installation / recovery disk
• 1.8 gig memory space: The application comes with 1.8gig free memory space on the SD card

The official distributor for Garmin in Nigeria, JEJ Engineering, says that the application is compatible with Windows Mobile (Pocket PC and Smart phone) and Symbian S60 devices with built-in GPS.

This really is interesting and good news. I’m looking forward to giving the application a spin and presenting a detailed review here. Watch this space.