I’ve been raving about Nokia Maps since I got my N95-8GB last December. Having voice-guided turn-by-turn directions on your phone is a killer app. It totally saved us getting back from Carnac to Roscoff this summer after printed Google Maps made a total mess of the outbound journey.

However something has gone badly wrong in Ireland and I’m not sure how long the problem has been there. I’m running the latest V30 firmware on my N95-8GB which includes the latest Nokia Maps 2.0. The big problem is that it seems to have lost the ability to find addresses.

Unless you give an utterly vague address like Rathmines, Dublin, it will fail. Most attempts at putting in street names or numbers fails. But what is driving me insane is that is has the data. The latest attempt was last week where I wanted to see where 84 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin was located. My searches were as follows:

84 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin: No results

Lower Baggot Street, Dublin: No results

Baggot Street, Dublin: A few results including “Baggot Street Lower”

Baggot, Dublin: Even more results and the type of list I’d have liked with the first search.

Come on! Is Nokia Maps really doing exact text matching including word-order on street addresses? That’s ridiculous and utterly useless. I’m particularly amazed that when there are zero results, that it doen’t expand the search using individual words.

Is this problem unique to Ireland?

Please Nokia, you have an awesome app in Nokia Maps 2.0 but if I can’t put in a destination address, then my use of it will plummet. Remember, Android is coming and this is the instant result for “84 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, Ireland” on Google Maps on my N95-8GB:

One other issue worth mentioning is foreign travel. I didn’t realise that loading a foreign country map on to the phone in advance of travelling did not include voice navigation. We ended up in McDonald’s in Vannes on free Wifi buying the France voice guide to help us get home.

I’d also like to be able to pe-load detailed routes at home to avoid the usual rip-off roaming charges. Luckily by using Vodafone Live on the SFR network we somehow managed to avoid roaming when the map detail was loaded up.

A few simple fixes could ensure that Nokia Maps continues to kick the iPhone’s hamstrung app and can compete against the Android app.

Oh and I’m still waiting for that touch-screen version of the N95…….