Pocket Streets & Trips Released for the Smartphone

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&jid=C2A7E49C8A437F4D94BC2E27D763DEA8&platformId=2&productType=2&catalog=0&sectionId=0&productId=116680' target='_blank'>http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&jid=C2A7E49C8A437F4D94BC2E27D763DEA8&platformId=2&productType=2&catalog=0&sectionId=0&productId=116680</a><br /><br /></div>Pocket Streets for Smartphone offers great map guide functionality right on your Smartphone. Locate addresses, intersections and points of interest or customize locations by inserting your own pushpins. Download maps of cities in the US, Canada and Western Europe from the Pocket Streets web site, or create your own maps using Microsoft desktop applications MapPoint, Streets &amp; Trips or AutoRoute. Once your maps have been synced to your Smartphone you can access them when you need them most, when you are on the go. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/menu.bmp" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/> <br /><br />This is great news! My favorite Pocket PC application is now available for my Smartphone. :D <br /><br />You can purchase a copy <a href="http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=116680">here</a> for $24.95. [Affiliate] There doesn't appear to be a trail version.

[Jerry Raia]

I've used this on my iPAQ 5555 and just got it for my i600. After I copied my maps over from my PDA i was pretty happy with the results. All my pushpins were there too. It was faster than I expected as far as moving about the maps is concerned. I wish it was a bit more flexible as th where maps can be stored. It wont find them in the sub folders, only in MyDocuments although you can have them in MyDocuments on the storage card.

[possmann]

This is good news... now I hope MS is working on getting their VoiceCommand to work on the Smartphone OS...

Has anyone hooked up their phone to a GPS device yet? Seems like this would be the natural next step for PocketStreets

[swbuehler]

Wait a minute ... I bought Streets & Trips 2004, which included the Pocket PC versions of Pocket Streets, but I still have to pay for the SmartPhone version?

Does anyone else see something fundamentally wrong with this?

[possmann]

DUDE! That so sucks - you think MS would have included that for your smartphone - allow you to download it based on being a registered owner of streets - write them an email!

[swbuehler]

DUDE! That so sucks - you think MS would have included that for your smartphone - allow you to download it based on being a registered owner of streets - write them an email!
The SmartPhone version was still in the works when Streets '04 went to retail, but we should expect at least that Microsoft would provide an update to people who own the software instead of making SmartPhone users have to pay extra for something that Pocket PC users don't have to pay for if they have the Streets software.

I would expect, however, that Microsoft would either (a) include the SmartPhone version in the next version of Streets/MapPoint, or (b) pull the Pocket PC version from '05 and charge for it, too.

[Santa Fe]

Has anyone compared this to Mapopolis? The ability to select directions by Outlook addresses is very handy in Mapopolis.

[swbuehler]

Has anyone compared this to Mapopolis? The ability to select directions by Outlook addresses is very handy in Mapopolis.

Pocket Streets does not offer directions on the device; never has. It is much easier to look up addresses and points of interest, and IMHO it's much &ldquo;sexier&rdquo; than Mapopolis.

Also, if you have Streets & Trips or MapPoint, you can make your own maps, and both products are superior to Mapopolis on the desktop.

[Jerry Raia]

I also prefered Streets over Mapopolis on the SmartPhone. Seems faster too.

[Kris Kumar]

Streets vs Mapopolis

These are my observations..

Streets has no GPS support, Mapopolis does...
Streets has no routing support, Mapopolis does...
Streets probably has better POI db than Mapopolis...

Where I feel Mapopolis rocks..
1.
Mapopolis - Find location based on Address, Contacts, Long/Lat, GPS, Category (POI) or Street Intersection.
Streets - Find location based on street address or place name (like hotel name, convention center etc, park).

2.
Mapopolis has intellisense, put in a partial street name or as you type the name, it starts showing the list of streets with the matching letters, kinda like the way Smartphone contact find works. Big time saver and reduces effort. Must have on smartphone, since it does not have keyboard.

3.
Mapopolis scrolls smoother (maybe even faster) than Streets.

4.
Another cool Mapopolis feature, when you highlight a POI on the map, you can place a Call using the softkey...lets say you highlight a restaurant, you can call them with one click to find out about timings or menu or place to go order !! Streets does not even allow you to highlight the POI on the map. I havent been able to figure out how to get the phone number and other details for a POI in Streets.

5.
Mapopolis allows you to create new Pushpins/Favorites. In Streets it has to be done on the desktop and then exported to the phone :-)


Overall - my vote is for Mapopolis hands down...no competition in terms of features.

Kris

PS : Note I tried Streets on 2002 phone. Dont know if the versions are different, but wanted to put this info out there along with my other findings.

[Jerry Raia]

Point 5 is not correct. I created new pushpins on my phone.

[Kris Kumar]

Lasher, You are right, I just figured out that if you Find an address, it does create a Pushpin. But you have to find an address (type in one). Whereas on Mapopolis, I can highlight any POI on the map and mark it as a favorite/pushpin.

One cool feature of Streets,

It shows the map scale in the top left corner, pretty handy. When you are zooming in and out, the scale changes, you can estimate the distance between two points. Handy feature. I dont think I saw this on Pocket Streets for Pocket PC.

Kris

[Jerry Raia]

Yes the map scale feature would have been nice on the Pocket PC version. Maybe in a future version. I do agree with you though that Mapopolis is more sophisticated than streets over all.