So Microsoft just announced the release of “MSN Local” for mobile, and guess what: it was availaible not only for Windows Mobile phones as expected, but also for J2me phones!
So, I had a try, and here is a list of the interesting things. First, I’ve tried it on my brand new K800…The download went well, but unfortunatly, many functions did not work. In fact, the main issue is that sofkey are not recognized by the program. So I was unable to exit from the map mode, and do other things than just browsing the map….
So then I’ve tried on the WTK simulators. thins went better then.
First, the UI is not as polished as on Google Map (the big competitor)
, but haves some good idea.
For instance, when you are looking for something, let’s say an hotel, or a pizza, then you just press the first jey, eventually the second, and msn will present you the list of matching categories. Of course, this does not works for complex things, but it’s very nice for the most usual things. And it’s quite impressive for a 98 kb program.
Unfortunatly, this is done by handling directly keypress, and does not seems to work when you have a “full keyboard” like a Nokia E61.
And as you can see, they choose to display these ugly button “go” and “menu” without any extra effort! Windows mobile corporate desgin?
The change between one UI screen and the other are smooth, and very visual (the move from right to the left) and provide a good feedback.
The result of a search can be displayed on a map…Nice icons, while a little bit small…It’s quite hard to navigate within the map, as the cursor move too fast, especially if you want to zoom in…
You can zoom in/out using the left sofkey: you have then the same kind of selector than on the web:
Of course, you can have directions from here:
Here is what it looks on the map:
Traffic is also available, but for now only for various US cities:
Conclusions:
That’s a quite good first shoot for MSN, especially for a complex app like this one. And note that the application is 98kb only.
the big issue (for me) is that it does not work on my mobile, but this should be quite easily solved….
I like the good UI innovation, and let’s see how Google will react…
Technorati Tags: msn, j2me, mobile, mapping
One of the big things with the iPhone, is the fact that GoogleMap is preinstalled. The client seems quite good and haves a lot of fancy animations. Unfortunatly, the iPhone does not have any GPS, but it seems obvious to me that a “GoogleMap” kind of application will be part of the standard feature of the phone, like email, web browser, etc….
Warning: This post will be french focused! 
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