By Harsh Vardhan (Facebook) (Twitter)
Remember the days of Nokia launching N series. Apart from it's inbuilt hard disc which was some what only crazy thing most people looked around, Brilliant Carl Zeiss lens and of course its name. Nokia however had a very good impression with its maps services. Recently Bharti Airtel launched Smart Drive for other phones.
BhartiAirtel launched a voice- based navigation and map service called SmartDrive. It’s a subscription service that provides the user with turn-by-turn navigation and live traffic updates — an alternative to Nokia Maps. You can look up “Points of Interest” on the app and plan your route according to the traffic conditions. The navigation feature is voice-based and will guide you via audio. You can select the desired route from a list that’ll be provided to you.
The most useful feature is the live traffic update feature. It combines historical traffic data along with real-time numbers of GPS devices activated on that route. Perhaps that is why this service is initially going to launch in, Bengaluru, Greater Mumbai and the Delhi NCR only. Traffic density will be presented as green, yellow or red areas to represent light, moderate and heavy traffic. The service is based on a monthly or daily fee (given below). Now you would ask, why would you pay Airtel to provide you a service that Nokia provides free? Well, probably because you can’t use Nokia Maps on all devices. Google’s and Apple’s traffic information services don’t support India, so neither Android or iOS users can take advantage of them. However, you can still use Google Maps and its GPS and route planning services.
From the list of compatible devices listed on Airtel’s website, the supported operating systems appear to include BlackBerry OS, Android and Symbian at the very least. This means that Windows Phone and iOS users won’t be able to use this service. It doesn’t affect Lumia owners much, really.
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Remember the days of Nokia launching N series. Apart from it's inbuilt hard disc which was some what only crazy thing most people looked around, Brilliant Carl Zeiss lens and of course its name. Nokia however had a very good impression with its maps services. Recently Bharti Airtel launched Smart Drive for other phones.
BhartiAirtel launched a voice- based navigation and map service called SmartDrive. It’s a subscription service that provides the user with turn-by-turn navigation and live traffic updates — an alternative to Nokia Maps. You can look up “Points of Interest” on the app and plan your route according to the traffic conditions. The navigation feature is voice-based and will guide you via audio. You can select the desired route from a list that’ll be provided to you.
The most useful feature is the live traffic update feature. It combines historical traffic data along with real-time numbers of GPS devices activated on that route. Perhaps that is why this service is initially going to launch in, Bengaluru, Greater Mumbai and the Delhi NCR only. Traffic density will be presented as green, yellow or red areas to represent light, moderate and heavy traffic. The service is based on a monthly or daily fee (given below). Now you would ask, why would you pay Airtel to provide you a service that Nokia provides free? Well, probably because you can’t use Nokia Maps on all devices. Google’s and Apple’s traffic information services don’t support India, so neither Android or iOS users can take advantage of them. However, you can still use Google Maps and its GPS and route planning services.
From the list of compatible devices listed on Airtel’s website, the supported operating systems appear to include BlackBerry OS, Android and Symbian at the very least. This means that Windows Phone and iOS users won’t be able to use this service. It doesn’t affect Lumia owners much, really.
You can like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
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