[Radecho007]

Is there even a reason to own a windows phone anymore? If Microsoft is giving away all its advantages and having none of the competition's?

[N_LaRUE]

MS doesn't own HERE maps. Nokia does. Nokia Maps and Services were not bought by MS.

[Radecho007]

Well that was a mistake

[N_LaRUE]

Well that was a mistake

MS has Bing Maps.

[salmanahmad]

Being an Android user, we already have a lot of great navigation applications, they should've tried to port over Nokia Camera.

[prasath1234]

This move by Nokia going to kill wp.because only offline capability is real useful feature which android is lacking.now happy switching to android.android has apps like syngic navigation but they cost you 1000 rs.so nokia is going to loose indian consumers .already redmi 1 s is going to launch at 6000 rs.android one so android I going to pretty much kill wp .very sad 😢.

[tgp]

This move by Nokia going to kill wp.because only offline capability is real useful feature which android is lacking.

Was HERE Maps the only thing keeping WP afloat? I welcome HERE Maps on Android because of the offline feature. I prefer Google Maps otherwise, but offline use is huge.

[salmanahmad]

This move by Nokia going to kill wp.because only offline capability is real useful feature which android is lacking.now happy switching to android.android has apps like syngic navigation but they cost you 1000 rs.so nokia is going to loose indian consumers .already redmi 1 s is going to launch at 6000 rs.android one so android I going to pretty much kill wp .very sad 😢.

Well your right about that, if HERE Maps is free then it will become pretty popular on Android and this will be another reason for why you wouldn't have to get a Windows Phone to enjoy Microsoft services.

HERE Maps seemed pretty good but it didn't support my country, when I moved back to Android I bought Sygic for $19, haven't regretted doing so.

But HERE Maps would be an interesting addition.

[Radecho007]

Was HERE Maps the only thing keeping WP afloat? I welcome HERE Maps on Android because of the offline feature. I prefer Google Maps otherwise, but offline use is huge.

No but it adds up. What do we get in return? Still no official YouTube app...

[Maaz Mansori]

This move by Nokia going to kill wp.because only offline capability is real useful feature which android is lacking.now happy switching to android.

I disagree. The less reliant on Google services people are, the better it should be for WP.

[salmanahmad]

No but it adds up. What do we get in return? Still no official YouTube app...

If you ask a lot of Windows Phone users, they don't want an official YouTube app and say they are fine with myTube and MetroTube and the countless other 3rd party clients.

So there is pretty much no real demand for an official app.

[Torcher Death]

Nooooo..... Why nokia why ?? ??

[HyperKid]

Everyone calm down. If you think Lumia users lost this,think again. The HERE maps and HERE drive+ was already made available to ALL WINDOWS PHONE users last year...REMEMBER???
And now since Microsoft didn't bought HERE, so they can do it.

[a5cent]

Is there even a reason to own a windows phone anymore? If Microsoft is giving away all its advantages and having none of the competition's?

The problem is not that other platforms are getting a taste of these services. That is good and necessary. The problem is that WP doesn't necessarily always offer the best implementation of them.

However, in this case, it's just Nokia doing what they must... bringing their services to where the market share is. Nokia no longer cares about Windows Phone sales. That is all in MS' hands now.

I really hope MS does a comprehensive restructuring of the multiple maps apps they currently have (including City Lens). It's a disorganized mess, and most have lackluster UIs (watching my fiancee get to grips with how the back button works in Nokia Drive was painful). All of them have a lot of potential for improvement. Having all these apps use the same address and POI database, with world wide coverage, would be another long overdue step.

Maps on WP haven't improved much in the last three years. That is the far bigger issue than Nokia maps coming to Samsung's Android devices.

[prasath1234]

Android has google maps but here map is very useful offline.Then it means one more reason not to ditch android.ohh next would be Cortana to ios nd android.

[Maaz Mansori]

Android has google maps but here map is very useful offline.Then it means one more reason not to ditch android.ohh next would be Cortana to ios nd android.

While I agree that Here Maps may have given Windows Phone a small competitive advantage, it also goes the other way too. Someone accustomed to Here Maps may be more willing to switch to Windows Phone than someone accustomed to Google Maps. Navteq, which Nokia has owned for a few years, is a very large mapping company and many GPS systems use their maps. It's not something that was special to Windows Phone. The problem is that Google pushed their services to Android users through bundling and other means so it didn't make sense for Android OEMs to try to go with a different mapping service. However, with recent disagreements between Samsung and Google, Samsung is looking for alternatives so it made sense to bring HERE maps because of the Navteq data which is comparable to what Google offers in Google maps.

[Torcher Death]

Please let it not be a free app at the very least !!

[anon8962102]

No. it's not for all android phone. Only for galaxy phones, tizen phones and tizen smartwatch. It seems nokia cooperates with samsung.

[jonnaver]

Was HERE Maps the only thing keeping WP afloat? I welcome HERE Maps on Android because of the offline feature. I prefer Google Maps otherwise, but offline use is huge.

You've been able to keep huge map sections offline in Google maps for quite a while now. Online has it's advantages too when it comes to traffic, accidents, and construction alerts.

[WDavis4692]

Is there even a reason to own a windows phone anymore? If Microsoft is giving away all its advantages and having none of the competition's?

Haha. Let them have HERE Maps. It's pretty damn crap in the UK. It can't even find my local shopping centre where google maps gets it right first try.

[DJCBS]

Being an Android user, we already have a lot of great navigation applications, they should've tried to port over Nokia Camera.

Wait. One thing at the time. Nokia's imaging goodness on Android is coming ;)

[Nerdy Woman]

Wait. One thing at the time. Nokia's imaging goodness on Android is coming ;)

Really? That should be interesting to see... It seems that much of Nokia's imaging quality is due to the quality of the camera hardware and firmware. Software that must be compatible with diverse hardware (some of which is better than others) over which Nokia has no control may not achieve the desired result.

[AV2RY]

Another thread about this. Really?

[Nerdy Woman]

Another thread about this. Really?

The other thread that was trending was closed by Snowmutt, the Moderator, on the grounds that it was speculative and had gotten off topic. Apparently, there are people who wanted to continue the discussion...

The wonderful thing about community forums? You can choose which threads you post to and which threads you ignore. One thing I've noticed about the vibrant WPC community is there are many threads for almost every topic. Much better than a ghost town forum.

[DJCBS]

Really? That should be interesting to see... It seems that much of Nokia's imaging quality is due to the quality of the camera hardware and firmware. Software that must be compatible with diverse hardware (some of which is better than others) over which Nokia has no control may not achieve the desired result.

Actually most of Nokia's imaging quality is in the software. There are a lot of OEMs with good quality camera hardware but they can't figure out the software side. A great example is Sony. Sony flagships use Sony G lenses which are really good lenses. They use Sony's camera hardware which are great pieces of hardware. The iPhone 5S also uses the same Sony G lenses and Sony camera tech. The difference is that Apple was able to put up a software construction that took great advantage of Sony's hardware, while Sony itself is still trying to iron out the software on their own cameras.
(Ok, said like that it seems like Sony is struggling with the cameras. They aren't. Sony Xperia phones are the only ones that can actually compete with Nokia's but they're still not 100% there).

So Nokia is working on putting all their camera tech knowledge (and patents) to use. Because Android is open source, it's easier for Nokia to actually create a Camera App that takes good advantage of the camera on a phone than it is if the OS is closed-down. Of course, perfect results can only be achieved through a partnership with the OEM to get deeper access to the camera. And hey...who knows...maybe Nokia already has a couple of partnerships in the works ;)