Apple iOS 6 Maps independently compared to Nokia Maps , found “very desperately poor”

UKMobileReview have posted a detailed review of the new maps on the iPhone 5 and all iPhones which upgraded to iOS6 vs Nokia Maps as found on Windows Phone.

The new Apple Maps app offer turn-by-turn navigation, satellite view, 3D mode and traffic information, which should have been an improvement over the Google Maps which they replaced.

A furore has however erupted over the quality and deficiencies of the Maps and UKMobileReview has looked into these issues in detail.

They split their review  into five sections – Standard view, Satellite View, Online vs Offline, Navigation and Experience and rated each section out of 10.

For the Standard view they found Nokia Maps more clear, and found Apple Maps lacked Point of Interest information.

For Satellite view the found Apple Maps users are reporting that the Satellite View often displays images that seem to have been photoshopped or edited using Instagram and even worse  will display bridges as being broken, locations that don’t exist and will quite often be extremely blurry.

For off-line use , of course Apple Maps does not have off-line navigation at all, while Nokia Maps excel at this.

For actual turn by turn navigation Apple Maps integrated very well with the iPhone, showing turn by turn directions on the lock screen for example but in terms of routing can occasionally take users through some weird, unlawful and downright crazy routes.

Lastly, in terms of experience, while the found the iOS experience good, they found Nokia’s much better.

They conclude:

Final Score

So here’s how they stack up after being torn apart in our comparison. Remember the scores below are a sum of the individual scores across each of the five sections. So here’s the scores:

Nokia Maps – 43 out of 50

Apple Maps – 24 out of 50

Wow I’m going to be honest and say the Apple Maps score shocks even me. When writing this, I didn’t work out the overall score until the end, in an effort to add impartiality. I’ve been brutal to Apple Maps and the simple reason is that Apple want Apple Maps to replace the competition and have been pushing it to be recognised as excellent.

Unfortunately for Apple, their first attempt is really quite bad. Sure it does have some nifty features but it definitely doesn’t stack up against Nokia Maps. It’s clear that just like ‘AntennaGate’, Apple rolled out a feature without any testing or quality control. In fact, some of the Apple Maps navigation and satellite view shots are actually comical and it begs to belief how the world’s largest technology company managed to get it SO wrong.

Because they did. Apple Maps is desperately poor. Even free navigation solutions such as NavFree for iOS beat it hands down. Apple occasionally release a product that doesn’t work and try to brush over the ensuing saga. They may have got away with it in ‘AntennaGate’ but they owe everyone of their users an apology for Apple Maps. They need to either spend some of that $656 billion and buy out a location company or go cap in hand to Nokia / Google and ask for Nokia Maps / Google Maps to be released ASAP for iOS 6.

One can’t help but think that if the late Steve Jobs was CEO and Apple CEO Tim Cook wasn’t, then Apple Maps would not have been released in its current state. Go on Tim, the ball’s now in your court…

Read their full detailed comparison at UKMobileReview.com here.