When I arrived at Amsterdam airport I rented a Toyota Auris hybrid, which has a build in GPS navigation system, the only thing missing was the SD card with the maps. Fortunately I had installed all necessary maps on my Lumia 800, the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France. To save money I turned off internet roaming and started the navigation application. I searched for my destination near Middelburg in the province of Zeeland.
Now driving in the Netherlands is different from driving in Finland, as in Finland traffic is easy and one drives in the same direction for long distances. In the Netherlands and Belgium to get from one place to another one has to change lanes and make turns every few kilometer or even more often. Therefor a good and reliable GPS navigation system is a great help if you are not familiar with the area. And it is also a lot safer if you know beforehand which turn to take.
To test the Lumia navigation I even started the phone without the SIM code, so no network assistance was used at all. And it worked great, all the way from Schiphol to the direction of Rotterdam and to the south along the western coast down to Zeeland went without any mistake, which saved fuel and nerves.
The offline maps contain a lot more than just roads and addresses. A vast body of information related to tourism, road services, you name it, it’s there. For example the picturesque medieval city hall of Damme in Belgium was easy to find. A great App, provided standard on the Nokia Lumia Windows Phones. Of course there is still room for improvement, for example there should be a link to your favourite locations of Nokia Maps and the possibility to save locations directly from the navigation App.
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