Pedestrian navigation has been talked about for a long time. Despite the fact that many navigation solutions did include a pedestrian mode setting, none of these were worthy of that name. This has now changed following a slew of announcements on the first day of the Mobile World Congress which is taking place in Barcelona this week. For the first time phones can be used for a variety of pedestrian type navigation applications such as tracing car parks or metro stations, finding the location of a business meeting or city sightseeing for tourists.
Both Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ have launched digital maps which are optimized for pedestrian use offering increased accuracy. The NAVTEQ Discover Cities maps include details such as walkways, bridges, tunnels, footpaths in parks and public transport information. The addition of dynamic Points of Interest makes pedestrian navigation an even richer experience.
Combined with new navigation software this now makes true pedestrian and multi-modal routing a reality. Nokia announced its new Maps 2.0 software offering several enhancements such as satellite imagery, “breadcrumb” traces for improved orientation and a simplified local search interface integrated into the map display which no longer requires reentering all search criteria.
Finally new phones are launched with hardware features which further improve the navigation experience. The most significant announcement is the Nokia 6210 Navigator phone which includes an electronic “city compass” based on magnetometer technology. This allows the navigation software to always be aware of the direction in which the pedestrian user is pointing - even when he does not move at all - and provide correct map views and guiding directions. The electronic compass solves one of the major issues with pedestrian navigation. Built-in GPS-receivers with higher sensitivity and A-GPS technology provide improved in-door coverage, another major requirement for pedestrian navigation.
The fact Nokia has launched a successor for the Nokia 6110 Navigator proves there is a viable market for navigation-centric mobile phones. This follows close on Garmin’s announcement of the nüvifone, which is also showcased at the Mobile World Congress. A new category of phones is clearly emerging. The nüvifone’s touchscreen may even give it an edge over the Nokia 6210 navigator.
To offer an even better experience, Nokia offers navigation-related on-line services such as the upload of automatically geo-tagged pictures to photo-sites such as Flickr. This allows users to exchange travel experiences in real-time. Both picture upload and satellite imagery download requires high volume data communications which is good news for mobile operators looking for new data applications to increase ARPU.
Another significant announcement is the integration of FM transmitters in phones such as the Nokia N78 and the SonyEricsson W980 Walkman. This allows tuning into the car’s radio and audio system in order to benefit from superior sound quality. Up to now this technology was only available on dedicated Personal Navigation Devices. This brings phones one step closer to PNDs in terms of ease of use and performance for in-car navigation.
