Earlier this week I posted the announcement of a new initiative by Lonely Planet and Nokia to bring the famous travel guides to GPS enabled Nokia phones. One of the big questions I had, is whether these new phone based guides could actually replace your trusty paper Lonely Planet.
So, in this review, I’m going to give you a closer look at how the Lonely Planet guides work, how they can help you find nearby recommended points of interest, and whether they really can help save some trees.
The Lonely Planet guides are part of a larger collection of guides available for Nokia Maps 2.0. Maps 2.0 is available on most recently released Nokia phones running the Symbian S60 operating system. To learn whether your phone runs Maps 2.0, check out the list on the Nokia site.
For the purpose of this review, I tested the Lonely Planet guides on a Nokia N78 smartphone. You’ll get a closer look at this phone in an upcoming review, but I can already reveal that it is absolutely perfect for travelers. It has outstanding battery life, 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, an FM radio and FM transmitter as well as superb music/video support.
To download a guide to your phone, you simply open the Maps application, then point the phone to the “Extras” menu, then “Guides”. In this menu, you are presented with a list of all available countries to select. You can then see all the available guides for that country.
In my case, I have the Lonely Planet guides installed for Chicago and Honolulu. The guides vary in size, the Chicago guide is 172kB. Using the speedy 3G connection on the phone, I was able to download other guides in about 7 seconds.
%Gallery-30290%Each guide costs $13.95, but a trial is available. That trial is only valid for 10 minutes, after this (very limited) time, you will have to enter a license code. The license can be purchased directly on the phone using Visa, Master Card or American Express. The entire license activation process is handled on the phone, which is actually very convenient, especially if you suddenly need access to a guide away from home.
Now on to the guide itself. I’ll let you know right away; these guides are not the same as a “regular” Lonely Planet guidebook. The Chicago Lonely Planet guide for Nokia phones only covers a limited amount of information.
The “regular” Lonely Planet city guide for Chicago is 280 pages, it contains maps, event guides, history and culture, information on day trips and more. The Nokia Lonely Planet guide covers 75 attractions, 76 shopping destinations, 75 hotels, 74 restaurants and 11 “general” locations, mainly consulates and embassies.
So, does this make the guide useless? Certainly not! The information provided in the guide itself may be fairly limited, but the combination of this information, on a phone with GPS navigation really does prove to be quite powerful.
You can lookup Lonely Planet recommendations, read their description, and then add it to your “My Places” address book in the map application. The paper Lonely Planet guide is great if you are sitting on a bus, or in your hotel room, but if you are out and about, being able to lookup the things you want to do, and have your phone tell you exactly how to get there is fantastic.
When browsing the information, I did come across one very annoying issue; many of the phone numbers listed in the guides are not correctly displayed, making it impossible to call them from the maps application.
Each guide entry contains some basic information; the address, their phone number, website address and a brief description. Once you find an entry, you can:
- show it on the map
- navigate to it with the “walk to” or “drive to” option
- add it to the “My Places” address book
- add it to an existing route
- show the details
- call the listed phone number
- browse to the listed web site address
- send it another phone using Bluetooth or an MMS message
Final thoughts: It would have been a little more honest (in my opinion) if the press announcement by Lonely Planet had been more descriptive. The initial announcement made it sound like a complete city guide would be available for the phone, when in reality all you get is a list of locations. The price is fairly reasonable, but you do need to take into account the additional cost involved with using the navigation feature on a Nokia phone (starting at EUR70 per year for drive/walk turn by turn guidance in a local region). If you are traveling to multiple cities, you’ll also be spending $14 on each city, which can add up very quickly.
In the end, you need to ask yourself whether the convenience of easy access to Lonely Planet listings on your phone is worth $13.99. As a geek, I can certainly appreciate the ease of use, and the ability to plan a day in advance right on my handset, but if you are already carrying a Lonely Planet guide, you may want to spend that $14 on souvenirs and enter the address by hand, as I just don’t see the phone guides making the books obsolete. Another option you could consider, is the ability to purchase individual chapters from Lonely Planet guides, and download them in PDF format, ready for you to print.