5 top map apps

Get yourself the best in navigation programmes for your phone

Cramming ever-smaller GPS kit into your mobile phone has led to many wondering whether they should just ditch their hand-held units. Well, we can’t answer that for you: but what we can do is give you the run down of the best navigation apps on the market. Whatever your handset, there’s an app for it that could save your bacon in a crisis.

Top Nokia mapping

OviMaps

£Free for Nokia users

nokia.com/maps

Nokia’s clever built-in mapping has taken on a new lease of life with countless extras being added to the basic service – and pedestrian navigation is one of them. Now you can take your smartphone and use it to guide you at street-level as a walker, not simply a driver. It’s a totally different kind of experience, and means you’re taken to your destinations quicker and with less hassle.

All new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones now include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, with high-end walk and drive navigation and access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides at no extra cost. 

Ovi Maps covers more than 180 countries with car and pedestrian navigation for 74 countries, in 46 languages, and traffic information for more than 10 countries. There are more than 6000 3D landmarks for 200 cities around the world.  Lonely Planet and Michelin guides have information on more than 1,000 destinations globally.

Great for urban travel

Google Maps Mobile

£Free

google.com/mobile/maps

Classic birds-eye view of the world with extra features like Street View photographic imagery, business listing and turn-by-turn directions for pedestrians. This application works on Nokia, Android, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows platforms, but is mapped for cars more than walkers.

That said, you’re able to get your position triangulated even without GPS; you can get cycling directions that work really well in urban environments; plus, Google Maps are getting heavily into social location and twitter-like news updates on your maps. You can tune in to where your friends are and what they’re doing by inviting them to join your map network – worth checking out.

Maps that come alive

Yell Labs

£Free

yell.com/mobilephones/labs.html

Profiles local businesses by using your phone’s camera and GPS: hold up the handset and the app tells you where you are, what the shops are that it’s pointing at, and can scan round you to give you the business listings in the immediate area.

Although this early version is only available for the iPhone 3GS, it’s easy to see it catching on. Even in the countryside, you’re able to scan the horizon for your nearest amenities, and when you’re a walker or biker in strange new towns and villages it’s a great way to find the best shops and pubs and call ahead to check stock – or even book a hotel room when the weather turns!

Navigation for foot traffic

Navmii

£29.99

navmii.com

The Windows and Nokia versions of this app give you turn-by turn directions on foot, and also ‘Friend Finder’, a feature that shows you where you friends are and guides you to them. You don’t need the address of the pub they’re in – just ask the phone where they are, and it takes you there. An iPhone version (£19.99) has the map, but no Friend Finder unless you’re on the newest version of the Apple handset (4.0). Navmii are a great company who deliver quality mapping in a format that will be instantly recognisable to drivers, and converts well to your handset screen.

Twittermapping

Stuck

£Free

swiftcover.com/stuck-iphone-app

The insurer Swiftcover has developed an app called stuck that combines twitter-like micro-blogging and GPS technology to apply posts to a globe that can then be drilled down to street level using Google Maps.

In particular there is a 'Near-Me' function that enables you do identify others users that are close by. This was used to good effect recently by a couple of hikers who had become separated by snow in mountains in Sweden and were able to blog their way back to each other using the stuck app!

Stuck uses geo-location technology to allow people to post a Twitter-style message about the locations or situations in which they are Stuck, which is then uploaded to a map of the world with a time stamp. Other iPhone users can then click on the Stuck and, using Google maps, zoom in to locate the person who posted the Stuck.