September 9, 2008 update: Transferring your Nokia Maps license from one phone to another is not easy and can take a long time. If you download the Nokia Maps unofficial shareware edition you can continue to use the license you paid for without interruption while Nokia is sorting out the mess.
Nokia Maps lets you look at maps, navigate them by car or on foot, and you can download city, region, and country guides from Berlitz, WCities, Polyglott, AA, Insight Guides, Lonely Planet, and others.
Browsing maps is free, navigation and guides require payment. Sounds reasonable, but the trial options are rather limited. If the navigation options or city guides you bought turn out to be of substandard quality there's no refund. And unlike in a real bookstore with printed guides, you can't browse the contents of the electronic guides for Nokia Maps before you buy them. Too bad, because most of the electronic guides attached to Nokia Maps are not much more than an expensive limited feature version of the paper versions. Buy 'em without trying and you'll often find you've wasted your money.
Unless you modify Symbian on your phone the non-Nokia way. Then you can install an "unofficial shareware edition" of Nokia Maps on your phone that lets you try before you buy. You can try as many guides as you like for as long as you need.
First of all, you need to tweak your copy of Symbian to allow installation of unsigned programs. Details on symbianhack.site666.info.
Next, get the unofficial shareware edition of Nokia Maps from Mobile Castle.
The unofficial shareware edition of Nokia Maps lets you try navigation and guides for as long as you like. When you're done trying, you can uninstall the unofficial shareware edition of Nokia Maps, replace it with the official version of Nokia Maps, and buy the guides and navigation features that you've tested at leasure. This way you know for sure that what you buy is worth the price. And if it's not worth the price, simply delete it and spend your money on something else.
The download links for the unofficial shareware edition of Nokia Maps are for Nokia Maps version 2.0.3204. There are newer versions available.
3 comments:
Best post I've found today. Exactly the kind of shareware I was looking for! Thanks a lot!
OMG! It seems to be working, I will test it tomorrow on a route :) N1 post, great work!
It does work - free voice navigation. BUT on my 6220 it would only find satellites 2/10 times (Route 66 and GoogleMaps find satellites in about 3-4 seconds), 8/10 times you have to close the application and start again, and again, and again.... and eventually you will get satellite. THEN the real problems start:
- routing will follow you for 500 metres then freeze
- navigation will give ONE voice navigation then freeze
- often needed to take battery out of phone to get this blastard application to shut down
I have reverted to the original Nokia version, without navigation, as at least that will work when I turn it on.
This hacked version is brilliant, when it works - but I get 5-6 success out of 100 tries. Forget it.
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