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Originally Posted by Sogarth
I haven't had a chance to install this yet, but in case somebody else has answered this before I do: what's different, what's better, what's worse than Virtual Earth Mobile 1.69?
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So, I've had a chance to compare Google Maps (Windows Mobile native) to VEM 1.69 and... I'm not impressed.
Pros:- Maps load fast. A lot faster than VEM. Which I suppose isn't surprising, considering that Google probably throws more servers and bandwidth at mapping than Microsoft does.
- The usage instructions are more intuitive. On VEM, there's no clear indication of how to handle numbered marked points. You need to press a number key to be able to jump through the marked points (which isn't intuitive)... which is a little difficult on units that have no keypad/keyboard (I assume it was originally developed for a SmartPhone). Meanwhile, Google Maps displays two arrows (on the display) that you can press to jump between its numbered marked points.
- Google Maps keeps a history of searches in a drop-down menu.
Ambivalent:- When you perform a search, Google Maps shows all of the locations it finds directly on the map. This becomes a little bit more complicated if the locations are further apart, this means that you're going to have to load the maps for all those locations if you want to just look at their basic information (in contrast to VEM, which has a text-based drop-down menu that you can peruse through initially, with a Map All menu option).
Cons:- There are little signs all over the place that it's not designed to be a Windows Mobile application. The fonts used in a lot of the dialogs aren't a standard size, so don't look right. Every time you run it, you get an informational dialog box that pops up first. The zoom in/out buttons, along with a few others, are sitting on the screen, making it difficult to do one-handed operations (since you need to keep poking the screen). The action button does absolutely nothing on the main screen.
- There's no ability to set where your cache is. It's always on your main storage in \Application Data\GoogleMaps, so it can easily eat up all of your storage space without you realizing it.
- Even for map sections that you've viewed on a different resolution, Google Maps display the "unknown map" background while you're loading it from the servers. If you have a slow connection (say, GPRS only), this is a letdown compared to VEM (which scales the map pieces you've seen).
- On searches, Google Maps displays a maximum of 9 locations. Compare this to VEM's 30.
- When you obtain directions, there's no way to get a listing of the directions. VEM's approach is somewhat strange, although it works - it pastes the directions into an e-mail.
- For those that like it, Google Maps doesn't support the hybrid mode, whereas VEM does (the Road and Aerial mode).
This is about all I can find at the moment... I can't actually address whether or not scrolling is significantly faster than VEM, since, well, I don't have a WM 2003 device....
All said and done, I would have to respectfully disagree with Janak, and say that although this is a very good first pass, it doesn't feel more polished than Virtual Earth Mobile - it actually feels less so. There are some areas where it's definitely better than VEM, but there are also some ways in which it's noticeably worse. I would personally prefer something that combines the advantages of both. :wink: