Okay, here is the set up:
The last couple weeks of our lives has revolved around 2 major events:
1) Buying a vehicle for my wife. We had saved up money for a nice used vehicle for her, but we were willing to drive wherever we needed to in order to get the most for our money.
2) Family going's on in St. Louis.
This meant a ton of traveling. Luckily for us, we have a ton of mapping services for just such emergencies. My trusty Lumia 900 with Nokia Maps and Bing Maps. She has a Samsung Galaxy Note 1 with, of course, Google maps.
This streach of driving I am about to write about is basically this: From our home in Danville IL to a Hotel in St. Louis, several restaurants and destinations within the city, then a road trip to Alliance OH, followed by a swing back to Danville, then back to St. Louis, then over to Richmond Indiana, back home, back to Richmond, on to St. Louis, then home to stay.
Without boring everyone to tears with details, I will just give a quick rundown of our experiences with each service.
Bing: Honestly, I think I am done with Bing maps. Since it is baked right in, it was so easy to look up an address (ALWAYS faster on my little old WP7.8 then her big, bad Droid!!!) and just hit the selection. Problem is, the directions were plain wrong on 2 occasions. Once, we drove into South St. Louis on the IL side looking for a exit that just didn't exist. The second was a time it had us completely lost looking for a road that was completely cut off from the directions. We could see it, just not get there. Also, when looking for a place to eat with friends in St. Louis, I used the Local Scout, and 2 of the places we called were out of business, one of them for over 2 years.
Nokia Maps: First the good part- I found them to be darn accurate. When "confused" in Alliance Ohio, I used it to get our bearings and it was accurate in showing construction nearby. Even a couple of unnamed backroads were on the map. The main problem I had with Nokia was that it seemed to pick longer routes. When we did the 9 hour trip from St. Louis to Alliance, it added a good 75 miles to our trip over the Google and Bing routes. We looked up the route home from Richmond while eating lunch, and the same result.
Google: Okay, I admit it. It hurts, but I will own up. We were using Google on her phone almost exclusively by the time this was all done. It showed the shortest route, avoided large traffic jams, was accurate, and basically made our trips bearable because we were not stressing out the wrong directions. Once, while she was driving she completely missed our exit and we had veared off to the wrong interstate. (She is so never living that down!!) Since I wasn't driving, I looked up on Nokia maps how to get back to where we wanted to go (this was the St. Louis to Alliance trip), and it had us going north basically to Chicago and driving over. Google had us slip down to a couple of state roads, catch our Interstate, and had us back on the route as pretty as you please.
Look, Google did not become a huge, successful company with all their products blowing chunks. Google Maps is good, especially here in the US. I have no problem giving the devil his due.
I am curious if my L900 is just not getting good updates since it is a WP7 device as opposed to being a WP8. Once I decide on an upgrade, MAYBE my maps will be comparable to Google.
But my endless roadtrips here has shown me that for right now, Google still owns the mapping industry. I am just curious if my fellow WPCers have had experiences like ours? Do I have better days ahead with WP8 mapping?Because right in now I am kinda wishing Google and Microsoft could work out their differences so we can have a Google Maps app on WP8. Makes me feel like a traitor.
It really stunk having to admit to the wife after all my bragging that we had to depend on her Android. Just hurt my mocho pride.
The last couple weeks of our lives has revolved around 2 major events:
1) Buying a vehicle for my wife. We had saved up money for a nice used vehicle for her, but we were willing to drive wherever we needed to in order to get the most for our money.
2) Family going's on in St. Louis.
This meant a ton of traveling. Luckily for us, we have a ton of mapping services for just such emergencies. My trusty Lumia 900 with Nokia Maps and Bing Maps. She has a Samsung Galaxy Note 1 with, of course, Google maps.
This streach of driving I am about to write about is basically this: From our home in Danville IL to a Hotel in St. Louis, several restaurants and destinations within the city, then a road trip to Alliance OH, followed by a swing back to Danville, then back to St. Louis, then over to Richmond Indiana, back home, back to Richmond, on to St. Louis, then home to stay.
Without boring everyone to tears with details, I will just give a quick rundown of our experiences with each service.
Bing: Honestly, I think I am done with Bing maps. Since it is baked right in, it was so easy to look up an address (ALWAYS faster on my little old WP7.8 then her big, bad Droid!!!) and just hit the selection. Problem is, the directions were plain wrong on 2 occasions. Once, we drove into South St. Louis on the IL side looking for a exit that just didn't exist. The second was a time it had us completely lost looking for a road that was completely cut off from the directions. We could see it, just not get there. Also, when looking for a place to eat with friends in St. Louis, I used the Local Scout, and 2 of the places we called were out of business, one of them for over 2 years.
Nokia Maps: First the good part- I found them to be darn accurate. When "confused" in Alliance Ohio, I used it to get our bearings and it was accurate in showing construction nearby. Even a couple of unnamed backroads were on the map. The main problem I had with Nokia was that it seemed to pick longer routes. When we did the 9 hour trip from St. Louis to Alliance, it added a good 75 miles to our trip over the Google and Bing routes. We looked up the route home from Richmond while eating lunch, and the same result.
Google: Okay, I admit it. It hurts, but I will own up. We were using Google on her phone almost exclusively by the time this was all done. It showed the shortest route, avoided large traffic jams, was accurate, and basically made our trips bearable because we were not stressing out the wrong directions. Once, while she was driving she completely missed our exit and we had veared off to the wrong interstate. (She is so never living that down!!) Since I wasn't driving, I looked up on Nokia maps how to get back to where we wanted to go (this was the St. Louis to Alliance trip), and it had us going north basically to Chicago and driving over. Google had us slip down to a couple of state roads, catch our Interstate, and had us back on the route as pretty as you please.
Look, Google did not become a huge, successful company with all their products blowing chunks. Google Maps is good, especially here in the US. I have no problem giving the devil his due.
I am curious if my L900 is just not getting good updates since it is a WP7 device as opposed to being a WP8. Once I decide on an upgrade, MAYBE my maps will be comparable to Google.
But my endless roadtrips here has shown me that for right now, Google still owns the mapping industry. I am just curious if my fellow WPCers have had experiences like ours? Do I have better days ahead with WP8 mapping?Because right in now I am kinda wishing Google and Microsoft could work out their differences so we can have a Google Maps app on WP8. Makes me feel like a traitor.
It really stunk having to admit to the wife after all my bragging that we had to depend on her Android. Just hurt my mocho pride.
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