Lonely Planet : The Book Guide vs the Nokia Maps Guide

As most of y’all might know by now, Nokia and Lonely Planet have entered into a collaboration where Lonely Planet’s guides will be offered within Nokia’s Maps application.

I’ll be travelling to Jaipur, Delhi ,Agra and Varanasi next weekend on a tourist-y trip of North India. I’ve been wanting to see The Taj Mahal ever since I came to India and now I finally get a chance to !

Since I travel around India a lot lately, I bought myself a Lonely Planet Guide book (2008 Edition) a couple months ago. When Nokia announced this collaboration , I was ecstatic ! Maybe I wouldnt have to lug around that huge guide book when i travel around anymore.

Sadly thats not the case though. While the Lonely Planet Guides within the Nokia Maps Application have their advantages, they cannot replace the actual book. Read on to see my experience with both.

Lets begin with ,

How to get the Lonely Planet Guides in your Nokia Maps application :

Start your Nokia Maps application. Go to Options — > Extras

Under Extras choose “Guides” :

Inside “Guides” you will see a list of countries. On choosing a country you’ll see the guides that are available for it.

For India, sadly, the only Lonely Planet guides available were for Delhi and Mumbai, which is a shame because I know Lonely Planet covers so many parts of India, and so well at that.

I downloaded the Guide for Delhi, seeing how I’ll be swinging by there next week.

The Nokia Maps version :

The Delhi guide in Nokia Maps has the following index :

Which is a far cry from its Lonely Planet guide book equivalent :

On selecting a category,such as “Eating“, you’re taken to a list of places under it. In this case, restaurants. It also tells you how far away from each place, you are. I am still here in Manipal, so it told me I was atleast 1900kms away from everything in Delhi :

The “Night” section takes you to a list of places to hang around in the evening :

The “Sleeping” section takes you to the Hotels :

“General” takes you to a list of nearby places that you might find important :

The “Shop” section takes you to a list of nearby market places :

The “See” section takes you to the Sightseeing tourist places in the region :

e="Screenshot0120 - Share on Ovi" alt="Screenshot0120 - Share on Ovi" width="240" border="0" height="320" />

Now, say you’re in the “Eating” section, you can select a restaurant, and when you open it, will be presented with the following options :

If you select “Show on Map“, it will directly take you to where the restaurant is, within the Nokia Maps application :

If you select “Show Details” :

It shows you a small brief description of the place :

You can also select “Drive to” or “walk to” and the application will begin to guide you to the restaurant or place that you’ve selected.

The Nokia maps for Delhi are already pretty darn good. Esspecially when you compare it to the non-existant maps for Udupi or Manipal or lesser known cities. All the Lonely Planet points of interest (POI) are clearly marked with the blue on white Lonely Planet insignia, and appear in addition to the Nokia Maps POIs :

You can zoom in and pan around :

Even scroll around the map to see the other places :

( Note : If you want Nokia Maps not to display places like Hotels, etc , you can disable the category within the Nokia Maps application by going to Options–>Tools–>Settings–>Map–>Categories and check mark and uncheck whichever categories you want. )

In terms of number of places, the Nokia Maps Lonely planet guide has most of the places that are in the book, although not nearly as organized as the book. I’d say they skipped out on about 3 or 4 in each category though, but all the major places are there.

For instance, which traveller in India, does not know Cafe Coffee Day (Indian version of Starbucks) :

It even has a description, like all the items in the guide :

And its latitude and longitudinal co-ordinates, if that wasnt enough :

But how does this compare to the actual Lonely Planet Guide Book ?

As i said earlier, there are a lot more sections contained in the index alone, compared to the Nokia Maps version :

The page for Delhi has a short summary of the place, followed by a few places of interest.This is something I was looking for in the Nokia Maps version since I really wanted to know a little about the place, but sadly there’s no information like this :

It also has some bonuses like a few pictures
of the places :

Each section is very (and I stress VERY) detailed, each with mini-sections to explain different things. Like for instance, there’s a separate “Eating” section and “Drinking” section (which happens to list Cafe Coffee Day ! Woo ! ) :

There are also extras like Train Timings, Dangers and things to watch out for, etc :

The “Eating” section has a little bit more information than the Nokia Maps guide version , and is more organized in my opinion :

The “places to see” section is also a lot more organised and has a lot more information than the Nokia Maps Guide version :

The Maps :

This is one section, where I’m happy to say, the Nokia Guides version is simply just way better. The maps in Lonely Planet Guidebooks are as simple as possible. While traveling around new places, I’ve found myself completely lost but found my way using their maps, in numerous occasions :

That being said, there’s simply no more greater convenience when you’re traveling in a new place, than having a GPS device tell you where you are, how to get to your next destination, how long it will take you to get there, how fast you’re going,etc etc all this while showing you most of this information on your device’s screen.

Compared to :

Heck yeah. This is the one section where Nokia Maps guide has the clear advantage . While the Lonely Planet Guidebook‘s maps are good and very detailed, the advantages that the GPS equipped Nokia Maps application has in this feature, cannot be ignored at all.

They have essentially crammed this amount of pages into the Nokia Maps guides, albeit after removing a lot of information :

So wait, whats the conclusion ?

While the Nokia Maps Lonely Planet guides are a very useful feature, it simply cannot replace the actual Lonely Planet Guidebook (To be honest, I don’t think Lonely Planet or Nokia wants it to). Which is sadly, something I was really hoping for. I’m still going to have to lug around that huge Guidebook when I go traveling. Especially since there are only 2 or 3 places in India listed in the Nokia Maps guides whereas the actual Lonely Planet Guidebook has covered almost every spot of India. And the Guidebook has a LOT of information which is nowhere in the Nokia Maps guide version.

That being said, the Nokia Map’s Lonely Planet Guide is a nice “Extra“. I will definitely find myself using it to find out where I am in Delhi and how to get to certain places, etc. It beats asking directions fro
m the locals, like I always have to do when I’m traveling. I think this could really take off for Nokia, if they get Lonely planet to cover more places. It could be a killer feature which they should definitely advertise among the Traveler – Tourist crowd. At 7.99 Euros (Rs 515) its cheaper than buying the 17 Euros (Rs 1095) book.

If the Lonely Planet Guide Book is a necessity to a traveler, the Nokia Maps Lonely Planet guides are a Luxury.

-Teh Cj