Nokia smartphones get free traffic service

Nokia South Africa has launched the latest update to Nokia Maps which includes a real-time traffic service provided by their subsidiary Navteq.

According to Nokia, their live traffic service includes updates on congestion, road closures, road works and other traffic incidents by colour-coding roads as red, amber or green depending on traffic flow.

Nokia Maps comes pre-loaded on all Nokia smartphones, and provide free turn-by-turn voice guided navigation. The traffic service is available on all touch Symbian smartphones.

Navteq provides the traffic data from commercial and government partners, as well as by crowd sourcing the information from its users. With crowd-sourcing, the more people that use the service, the more accurate it will get, Nokia said.

Nokia said that their maps are the most accurate in South Africa and has 100% coverage of the road network (554 239 km), with speed limits for major roads and lane guidance for all motorways. Walk navigation is available for Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Nokia Maps Traffic lights not working

In addition to the new features for mobile, Nokia Maps for desktop has also been updated and now includes 3D imaging of Cape Town, amongst other major global cities.

To capture these images, Nokia explained that specialised camera equipment takes an image per second of the same object, up to 100 times, each at a different angle. Images are then joined together to form the 3D object using image processing software.

Along with 3D, ‘heat mapping’ has been added to Nokia Maps, providing a way to track the highest density of particular points of interest in a city.