Notices

Voice and turn-by-turn navigation were for-pay add-on features of Wayfinder on N8x0 devices though. What you had bundled for free was something roughly equivalent to Ovi Maps on the N900. Subscribe to Wayfinder or buy Sygic, either way you're paying extra money for a more fully featured solution.

(And I'll just suppress my rant on the worthlessness of Wayfinder's address search.)

I too learnt the hard way not to put my faith in Nokia updating devices that are new-to-market. I think the advertising and promotion of N900's navigation abilities was potentially misleading;

If just about every mid-tier and upward Nokia phone has fully-functional SatNav with turn-by-turn voice instructions it is not unreasonable to expect a top-end (i.e. premium-priced, "powerful" device) to be similarly equipped.

Nokia may have had other fish to fry with Meego and N8, etc., but they really should have looked after their N900 customers better and delivered a more complete package.

After all, we are the ones most likely to invest in a Meego device...

I for one will be taking a back seat on Meego for a while. Rather than risk more of my hard-earned cash I will probably buy a second-hand X6 or E-series device as a second device for navigation - they have all had a good few firmware updates and have matured into stable, useable devices. They can all run the latest version of Ovi Maps as well - free to download for all other current Nokia devices...

Don't get me wrong - I love my N900 and there's no way I'll part with it, but you'll see Satan skating to work before I invest in the 'next new thing from Nokia'

I agree that Nokia hasn't lived up to user expectations for N900 maps.

However, the braver amongst you could put your collective angst to better use by installing and testing modrana from -devel repo. It already does proper turn by turn with voice guidance and custom POI's are imminent. It is pretty stable (very useable in-car) so give it a try and help make it the free mapping alternative to ovi.

Thanks Pigro.

That's what I like about this community - after the bitterness and despair, the clear, calm voice of hope emerges.

I will give it a go!

That is very true, I had honestly forgotten that you had to pay for wayfinder. Even though my previous statement was flawed, in todays navigation software market I still think that Nokia should be offering N900 users a full feature itteration of OVI Maps.

Modrana really is worth a try. It has big easy press buttons ideal for use while driving; one touch reroute (works flawlessly even when you go wildly wrong on purpose); x2 and x4 map scaling options - again, great when driving so you can see street names easily; integrated POI search/store (with custom query); voice guidance with onscreen instructions I'd already mentioned. Also fully working auto rotate and map centring around current position. Oh, and it works with downloadable tiles by default, but development is underway on storing downloaded map data to sqlite dB (much more efficient/compact disk space usage).

But best of all is the developer, who is a real good guy, always willing to fix/enhance and provide detailed feedback & help. I'm not involved with the project - just a very satisfied user who greatly appreciates MartinK's (the dev) ongoing efforts to deliver what people actually want/need. The word "proactive" has been hijacked by bullsh¡t bingo, but it trully applies in this case :-)

Have a look here http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58861

while i appreciate modrana and sygic i was really ticked off that my e71 could do better but my question is how is it that according to nokia the maemo os cannot support turn by turn with voice nav... Im no programmer so when they say something like that... i cant accept it.. this is a stupid question but will the release of meego help the n900 get the new ovi maps? since all i hear is how a lot of programs are qt based and cross platform support etc.

I've been getting offers of OVI Downloads since the product first release. I reply back to Nokia Marketing, everytime, that I will not upgrade to the N900 and my N810 doesn't run OVI. I will not buy another Nokia. Dissatisfied, disgruntled, and dislike Nokia.

I asked this question on Ovi Maps developer's blog webiste and the response :

"no silence is tolerated on this Blog :-)
But we are currently working hard on MeeGo, which you can already install on your Nokia N900 by following these instructions http://wiki.meego.com/N900"

What a pointless response, did you follow up? MeeGo for N900 is no way near ready for consumers, it is less featured than Maemo 5 and to my knowledge has no Turn-by-Turn navigation option.

The mind baffles.....