The Nokia booth has been very busy in the past few days of CES 2012. After announcing new devices like the already available (in the United States) Lumia 710 and the coming Lumia 900, the Nokia booth is buzzing with excitement, previews and hands on goodness. The folks over at The Nokia Blog got some video of the Nokia City Lens Beta application and the Nokia Transport application. These two aforementioned applications add to the collection of exclusives coming to Nokia devices only, some will be available on other devices at some point, but others will remain exclusive. Continue reading for the video demos and information on each application. You’ll also find a video demo of the newly announced Lumia 900 running the Nokia Maps application where The Nokia Blog folks claim it is very impressive to use on that device.
The City Lens applications is one of Nokia’s location/commerce applications with the idea of using augmented reality through the phone’s camera(s) to find out what’s around you. You can select to filter locations by category and then nearby. City Lens will show locations both inside a location and outside. Outside viewing relocates labels for buildings to allow simultaneous clear views of such buildings. If you are interested in a location you can simply tap on it for information about the location, and even launch directions to the location (using Nokia Maps). If too many interested locations are available they will be joined in clusters which may be expanded with a single tap as to not obstruct the viewing area for the user. City Lens is still a beta application therefore all information and features may change for final release.
The Nokia Transport application tells a user how to get from where they are to their destination, using public transportation. When seeking a destination that requires monorail or bus transportation, boarding times, arrival/departure times and even pricing are all shown within the application. If both a bus ride and a walk are required for desired destination, the application will automatically join such transports together without any user changes. You can save daily routes to Nokia Transport and even pin them to your start screen, allowing you to quickly view next boarding times, times of arrival and more. The application is actually in an alpha stage at the moment, but it was stated to be available “soon.”
Finally, Nokia Maps is an application that has been viewed on Nokia devices previously, but this video features a Lumia 900 running Nokia Maps. The interface is very unique, fluid, and everything loads very quickly on the Lumia 900 (considering the Lumia 900 is 4G LTE connected).
These applications being introduced by Nokia are all great in their own way and definitely useful to any daily commuter or traveler, but we really hope they will all be joined together into the Nokia Maps application. If City Lens and Transport are simply dropped into the Nokia Maps application at some point, of course you will have two less applications and an all-in-one very powerful application on your Nokia Windows Phone. Hopefully, Nokia realizes an all-in-one Nokia Maps application implementing Transport and City Lens is the best way to go.
What do you think about these Nokia exclusive Windows Phone applications, anything else you would like to see implemented? Let us know in the comments below or on the eWM forums.
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