Nokia’s impressive HERE navigation and mapping app is no longer an exclusive to the company’s own Lumia Windows Phones, and is now a free app to download on other devices, including the Windows Phone 8X by HTC.
The Finnish company’s excellent suite of navigation apps is now available for free from the Windows Phone Marketplace on all Windows Phone 8 devices. This includes Nokia HERE Maps, HERE Drive Beta and HERE Transit.
HERE Maps offers slick turn-by-turn navigation both online and offline, allowing the user to save favourite destinations for use even when a phone has no signal in order to retrieve the mapping data. Similar to Google Maps, HERE Maps offers indoor mapping for large buildings, giving a detailed layout of malls, shopping centres and airports.
HERE Transit provides public transport information in a neat little app, collating information from local bus, train, tram and ferry services. It’ll tell you how to get somewhere whether it’s a simple bus ride or a walk to the ferry, the ferry to a train station and on to an airport. Transit will give you departure and arrival times as well as how long each leg of your journey will take, based on live traffic and transport updates.
HERE Drive may carry a beta tag but it’s an excellent app that provides full voice guided turn-by-turn navigation for those on foot and in a vehicle. It synchronises with the other HERE apps to gather traffic and public transport information in order to ensure you get where you need to be as quickly as possible, and has all the functionality you’d expect from a regular satnav, including POIs and map layers.
If you fancy trying out something new to help you get from A to B and probably on to C as well, give the HERE maps a go now.