Nokia has used its official Conversations blog to take a thinly-veiled shot at Apple's new Maps application.
The new in-house solution, which replaces Google Maps in iOS 6, has come under fire from some reviewers and users, who've pointed out inaccuracies and shortcomings.
Nokia has taken the opportunity to pounce on the criticism by playing up the strengths of its own Nokia Maps application, which itself has been six years in the making.
The blog post benchmarks Apple Maps against Google Maps and Nokia Maps, drawing attention to Apple's lack of public transport information, offline support, and the presence of turn-by-turn navigation in only 56 countries.
Pretty isn't enough
"Unlike our competitors, which are financing their location assets with advertising or licensing mapping content from third parties, we completely own, build and distribute mapping content, platform and apps," wrote Pino Bonetti of Nokia Conversations.
"In other words, we truly understand that maps and location-based apps must be accurate, provide the best quality and be accessible basically anywhere.
"That's been standard practice at Nokia for the past six years, and we also understand that "pretty" isn't enough. You expect excellence in your smartphone mapping experience."
In other words, brains, not beauty, count when you're trying to get somewhere.
Generally very good
It appears that Apple's new Maps app isn't 100 percent complete at the time of release, a point made clear by a Tumblr blog poking fun with poorly rendered maps and incorrect location data, and other online criticisms.
Despite the criticism, our TechRadar iOS 6 review, found Maps "generally very good," though the reviewer did "encounter a number of errors."
Flyovers - Apple's answer to Street View - are "superb where they're available" although they're limited to a few cities at the time of writing.
Our reviewer found that the level of detail offered in Google Maps will be what most users will miss when using Apple's solution.
Source : techradar[dot]com
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