Nokia E90 and Nokia Maps - Satnav for people who don't want a Satnav

Up to now, I have never been a fan of Satnav. Watching motorists looking at a small screen on the dash instead of looking out for me on the bike scared me from the moment they became commonplace.

However, there's none so pious as the converted and an "incident" in Germany where my passenger's newly acquired Garmin was hastily unboxed and fired up started me on the path to richeousness. I was already looking for a new mobile phone and built in GPS moved from the "nice to have" category into a requirment.

I've been looking at the commercial software options but at the moment, most seem to have one disadvantage or another - they don't use the E90's internal screen, they can't use the internal GPS or worst of all, they are "locked" to the memory card they are supplied on. However, Nokia Maps has the answer for me. Although it can download maps on the fly (if you have a suitable data tariff) it is also possible to install the maps to the device using Nokia's "Maploader" software, a far better solution.

"Turn by turn" voice guidance is not a standard feature (nor is route planning in V2 of the software) but you can add it when required for a small fee - currently £6 for a month (UK only). This suits me fine as most of the time I know where I'm going. I'll certainly buy a month's licence for Europe when I go on holiday in August.

In the Mazda 2 which is "fully fitted" for the phone it's excellent. I keep the Navman B10 external GPS receiver in this car which means faster satelite "lock on" and there is now 12v power in the top glovebox so I can use the E90 open or closed when navigating. Despite the increased screen area of the internal screen, I find myself more likely to leave the phone in the cradle. This is because the small fonts are difficult to read and it's also harder to operate the controls on the keyboard when it is sitting flat on the dash.

I tried to be clever yesterday in Coventry and Nokia maps certainly saved me. I had previously saved a long term car park into favorites and was heading for my destination when I saw a sign for car parking at the venue I was attending. I ignored the SatNav, followed the sign then found that the car park was full and then simply re-searched on my original destination to get me back on track. Without the Satnav I would have been lost in Coventry's city centre.

It integrates well with the Visorlite and although I have nothing really to compare it to, "it does what it says on the tin". When I have used it on routes that I know and chosen to ignore, it recalculates quickly without telling me to U-turn. It gives instructions in good time and tells you to "keep left" as appropriate on merging motorways. Even in the upright cradle on the external screen, the details at the bottom are too small (time/distance to destination and current speed) but the mapping and directions are clear enough. It's best to turn off the various points of intetrest like petrol stations and garages as the small screen can get crowded.

It's a pity the call/hang up buttons don't work while navigating, you have to "long press" on the menu key to get back to the standby screen but otherwise it's fine.

Last week I was driving our other car, a Mazda 5. This has no provision for phone at all. All I did was put the Visorlight on the sunvisor and kept the phone in my pocket using the internal GPS only. As an example of the effortless use of modern technology it was peerless. Although I didn't have a screen to look at, navigation commands came clearly through the Visorlight.

I don't know how I ever managed without GPS. The licensing model may not suit everybody but until a "perfect" E90 solution appears, Nokia Maps will do for me.

Nokia E90 In the car - Cradle Issues

Because the Nokia E90 has built in GPS and navigation is much more user friendly in "open" mode, I was ideally looking for a cradle that allowed the phone to be used open or closed.

Sadly, such cradles don't seem to exist - but even once you settle for closed mode there isn't an equivalent of the excellent Nokia MBC-13L I used to use with my E70.

I'm a big fan of Brodit products and the "Proclip" is a "first fit" as soon as I have a new car. However, their cradles for the E90 didn't look quite "right" to me (open or closed) so I sourced the Herbert Richter cradle from Expansys.

This does allow you to open the E90 - but only to 90 degrees which means it won't suit navigation in open mode. However, it's a good cradle and when combined with a Brodit "tilt/swivel" mount and the aforementioned Proclip it provides an ideal mount in my Mazda 2 which is the car I use for business. I was pleased to note that it uses the now quite common clip system to fit the cradle to the mount rather than screws. It's a pity that it's a completely passive mount but since I've also given up the search for a wired boom mike for handsfree use and settled on a bluetooth visor handsfree unit at least it's only the 12v power lead I need to plug in each time.

My inital experiences with navigation on the E90 prove that it is perfectly possible to navigate on the small external screen so I'll settle for that at the moment. I know that I do want to use the E90 in open mode for navigation eventually - but I'll do that by sitting the phone on an anti-slip mat in the top glovebox of the Mazda 2 (where the lid acts as a sunshade) - but before I start to do that, I need to find a neat way of getting the 12v power into that top glovebox. That's a Navman B10 external bluetooth receiver sitting just behind the E90. I'll report on that later - but it was certainly a wise buy despite the internal GPS of the E90.