Waze, the social GPS solution that allows users to report traffic incidents and updates maps with user-generated information finally became publicly available for S60 3rd Edition smartphones a few weeks ago. While this includes awesome phones like the Nokia E71, Nokia N79, and even the old Nokia N95, unfortunately it left the touchscreen phones out in the cold. Fortunately, today, that changes.
Today, exclusively through Symbian-Guru.com, you can download the new version of Waze with full support for touchscreen smartphones such as the Nokia N97 or Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This version should also work on the Samsung i8910 OmniaHD, as well as the Sony Ericsson Satio and other non-Nokia Symbian-powered smartphones, though we haven’t tested that quite yet.
So, what’s cool about the touchscreen version, aside from the much-needed support? Tons.
For starters, when you first launch the application and tell it where you are, you get a great little information screen like this, showing you the current Waze status in your area. For me, in Dallas/Fort Worth, we’re in the ‘early building’ stages, which means that we need more Wazers! This screen is really important to give me an idea of how important my Waze activity is going to be (very, obviously), but also to set my expectations properly.
Past that, I can either login with my existing account or I can setup a new Waze account. The Waze application does not use the built-in text input methods, but rather (like Opera Mini 5) presents its own onscreen QWERTY keyboard. This is very easy to use, in my experience, and works great.
This is the default screen that you’ll see. You can see there are large, easy onscreen buttons to snap to your current location, as well as access the settings and various other features. The zoom buttons are on either side of the screen, which is good, because you’ll be less likely to accidentally press the wrong one.
One of the big features of Waze is the user-generated aspects, so naturally those should be highlighted. For starters, you can update the map at any time, if there is incorrect information, by pressing the pencil button on the far right. Here you can add new roads, update the house number, or report another map problem. These will be verified by the Waze team and then pushed out to other Wazers.
You can also file reports from the road, including the presence of police, traffic, or construction. To do so, simply press the ‘Report’ button, and then choose the appropriate event.
You can also browse through the most recent events for your area, so that if you’ve just booted Waze up, you can quickly see if there are any events you should know about.
The search feature includes local search powered by Google, as well as a few others. You can also store and view favorite destinations, though unfortunately at this time this is not able to read the Landmarks you may have stored through Google Maps Mobile or Ovi Maps. Hopefully a future update will include this feature.
There are also a ton of settings that you can change, to make Waze fit your usage and preferences. Things such as the map colors, backlight control, and auto zoom can all be adjusted, as well as the measurement system.
I’m personally completely thrilled to have full touchscreen support from Waze, and will now be torn between the latest Ovi Maps beta and Waze. It will be interesting to see over the next month or so which I end up using more often. As of right now, I could see myself launching Waze when I’m just driving around, but then switching to Ovi Maps when I’m headed to a specific destination.
You can download Waze for Symbian touchscreen devices here.
What about you? How is the Waze status in your area? What things would you like to see supported in future versions?
