Nokia Leaps into Mobile Web with Sports Tracker

The Nokia N82 handset with Sports Tracker GPS software gives superior directions on the road, but loses something amid tall buildings. Athletes may love it

by Jack Ewing

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Has navigation capabilities, in addition to multimedia and Internet browsing

The Bad: The handset's battery drains too quickly in navigation mode

The Bottom Line: Excellent choice for frequent travelers who also want state-of-the-art handset features

Reader Reviews

On a recent holiday morning, I waited nervously in a pack of cyclists at a shopping mall parking lot outside Frankfurt, Germany, suited up in helmet and Lycra and waiting for the starting gun. I didn't have a prayer of winning the bicycle race, an amateur "everyman" competition staged in conjunction with a pro event on the same day. But I did have something I'm pretty sure no one else in the peloton did: Nokia Sports Tracker.

I was testing the free software program Nokia (NOK) developed for handsets equipped with global positioning, such as the N82 phone that the Finnish handset maker lent me. Shortly before the start, I fired up Sports Tracker by pushing a couple of buttons on the handset. As the tangle of several thousand cyclists pedaled carefully away from the starting area and gained speed, the software used the GPS capability to track my position, speed, and even altitude.

Precisely 2 hours, 8 minutes, and 19.6 seconds later, I rolled across the finish line. I finished in the middle of my age group over the hilly, 38-mile course—for me a good showing. But I was almost as excited to see if Sports Tracker had worked as advertised. Immediately I clicked "stop," and with another push of a button, wirelessly uploaded the data to Nokia's Sports Tracker site (sportstracker.nokia.com).

Maps: Nokia vs. Google

Later, sitting in front of a PC, I was able to track my route on a map and even superimpose it on satellite images of the terrain. (See for yourself.) It was a fun way to relive the experience since I hadn't taken any pictures with the N82's 5-megapixel camera. (Photography is not a good hobby to pursue at the same time you're pedaling.) But if I had, the software would have uploaded the images and embedded them on the map location where they were shot, the so-called geo-tagging feature.

Sports Tracker is the type of program that will determine whether Nokia is on the right track with a mobile Internet strategy based on location—or "context," to use the industry buzzword. I spent two months testing the N82, which online retailers are offering for about $550, in conjunction with Nokia Maps, the company's core location software. The device Nokia lent me for testing also included the company's navigation service, which normally costs $14 for a one-month local subscription, or $200 a year to cover all regions. I also compared the Nokia offering with the prototype version of Google Maps for mobile phones, a free download at www.google.com/mobile.

Nokia provides more useful navigation than Google (GOOG), and Sports Tracker is a brilliant way to use GPS for more than just getting around. However, Google Maps' search capability was better at finding nearby services such as restaurants. And Google Maps did a passable job determining my location using cell-phone signals rather than GPS. If, like most people, you don't yet have a GPS handset, Google Maps has a pretty good solution.

Getting Around with Dispatch

Nokia last year agreed to pay $8.1 billion for Chicago-based navigation-data provider Navteq, so you'd hope the company offers good navigation. In fact, it worked well. I used the voice navigation extensively around Frankfurt, as well as during several out-of-town trips, and it helped me follow some pretty complicated routes—though it also steered me wrong on a few occasions.

For example, the service guided me from a Hertz rent-a-car office in the Bavarian city of Ulm to the tax haven of Liechtenstein, where I was doing research for a story (BusinessWeek, 6/8/08). The route involved several border crossings and several changes of highway, as well as at least three separate cell-phone service providers. The female navigation voice with the British accent remained unflappable, failing only during the final mile, when the handset battery ran low.