It was raining cats and dogs this morning when I decided to get out and give Garmap and Nokia Maps a spin. I needed to pickup a desk diary at the office. In the last few days, I had bookmarked both my office and residence on both applications.

So this test run was more-or-less to see how accurate either applications are in terms of route planning.

Nokia Maps

Nokia Maps was up first. Getting into my car, I launched the application, located my office premises on it and instructed it to guide me there. Nokia maps did a fine job, presenting me with a route to follow.

The voice instructions were on spot with directions such as: “Turn right and then the next right turn“, “Turn right after 355 metres“, “Take the next turn left and you have arrived at your destination“, and as I pulled up in the car park, the soothing female British voice clipped, “You have arrived at your destination“. Yes; that felt good.

In the course of the trip, I decided to play pranks on the application and deliberately disobeyed some turn instructions. Nokia Maps wasn’t fazed. My guide’s voice would simply pip, “Recalculating route”, then re-draw the visual guide and give me another set of instructions.

I know those streets, and can testify that Nokia Maps was very accurate leading me through.

Garmap for Mobile

On completing my task at the office, I launched Garmap for Mobile for the return trip home. It drew up a return route – the exact route Nokia Maps had originally drawn on my way from home earlier.

This time, I headed in the opposite direction. A few seconds later, Garmap told me, “Re-calculating route“, re-drew the on-screen route, and gave me the next turn instruction. The instruction was spot on (I know every street in that area and where they terminate). I disobeyed and kept going.

Another re-calculation and corresponding voice direction. Correct once again. I ignored it and kept going. Every now and then, I would obey one direction, but disobey the next two or three. Each time, Garmap re-calculated correctly and gave accurate voice directions.

I noticed that Garmap got one or two street names wrong (the name of the street you are on is displayed on-screen), but it got all routes and turn instructions correct all the way home.

As I drove up in front of the house, Garmap’s voice direction finally said, “Turn left and you are at your destination“. Well, yes, the entrance to my residence stood to my left!

Conclusions

In this test, I rate both applications equally. Yes; it was a short test, but any navigation system that can acccurately guide anyone through the streets of Ojodu (not VI, Ikoyi, Surulere or Ikeja), where my office is located, deserves a fair score.

Though the weather was cloudy, GPS reception by both applications was good.

If you have any ideas you’d like for me to try out in my series of tests on these two applications, let me know.

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.

Finally, those of us with GPS enabled phones in Nigeria can now at least put them to use, albeit in a limited way.

In the past, most navigation applications that run on GPS enabled devices didn’t come with support for Nigeria and that included the widely popular Google maps. But that has changed now with the release of the latest version (3.0.1.4) of Google maps for s60 devices.
Google maps loaded the map of Lagos when I launched it and it pinpointed my location.

Features like getting direction from your current location to a new location are currently not working, but we can expect that with further updates of the software more and more features will have support for Nigeria.

In case you are itching to see your street on your phone, move over to http://m.google.com on your s60 browser to download the software. And don’t forget to give us feedback of your experiences and impressions.