I have given Ovi Maps on the N900 two chances now. One time driving to Arundel Mills and today walking from the Starbucks in Chinatown, Washington D.C. to the National Geographic Museum on M and 17th street. It has failed both times for general navigation.

One problem it has (besides being slow and lack of features you would find in most GPS and map applications) is the inability to keep straight. Now it’s no secret that the N900 doesn’t have a digital compass but you don’t need one for a quality GPS experience. Most GPS units don’t even have them! My TomTom doesn’t have one and it doesn’t send me spinning into circles when I stop. You might ask how it’s possible to avoid this issue without a digital compass, the answer to that is to simply lock the direction once there’s no movement. I don’t know if it’s a bug, but it was hard for Ovi Maps to stay oriented when I was standing, waiting for the pedestrian signal. It just kept spinning and spinning.

Another issue is returning to Ovi Maps after locking your screen. I would lock the N900 and zip it into my pocket for its safety as I traversed the sidewalks of D.C., some sidewalks cleared, some barely cleared and iced over, other times pure snow slush. Whenever I took it out to checkout my location it wouldn’t respond to input. Again I don’t know if this is a bug or just general problems with the software itself.

There are several other issues like not being able to set your on POI, no turn by turn directions, no voice guidance but those fall under lacking features. Since Ovi Maps on Symbian do have these features. One can only hope Nokia will fix the Ovi Maps situation on the N900 soon. Sadly the tickets for the Terracotta exhibit were sold out till January 3rd. But an interesting way to kill time nevertheless.

Maemaps is interesting and pretty useful but it has its own faults. I also tested it out but maemaps isn’t meant for navigation as it lacks tracking. With the geo-location add-on from extras-devel you can have it put your GPS coordinates into box A, leaving you to type box B. Here lies the first problem, some that MaemoMapper from the older Nokia Internet tablets have too. First, you need to know the exact location. Unlike the regular Google Maps interface (which also works well on the N900) if you mistype, or don’t know the address. It’ll just give a location error, on the regular site it will offer suggestions that you can choose from.

Another problem is the lack of a way to refresh the page. It starts the entire process over meaning you have to re-enter the address you wish to go to again. I haven’t tried clicking the . again though, that could potentially update the GPS coordinates thus refreshing the directions.

Overall there is a gap for a quality GPS program in the N900. Whether that be Sygic, an improved Ovi Maps from Nokia. Maemaps adopting more from Google (I don’t know if it’s using the API Google offers), MaemoMapper, or some other unknown solution not yet announced.

Edit: Just noticed that MaeMaps has a search for things like Food in the bottom left hand corner.