Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Nokia Maps & internal GPS on the Nokia 6650

http://maps.nokia.com

The AT&T branded Nokia 6650 includes AT&T Navigator powered by TeleNav.
Unfortunately this requires a subscription of $9.99 per month plus data charges for route information (no charge for maps). But if you're in the know with Nokia products and services then you might have heard of Nokia Maps or non-subscription based mapping solutions like Garmin.

I've heard the 6650 has an internal GPS but I didn't see any of the customary Nokia GPS related applications like GPS data to show satellite and position information.

Would AT&T lock out the internal GPS like the Verizon's Blackberry GPS while AT&T's Nav relied on network assisted GPS? If the internal GPS was working, would GPS applications other than AT&T's Nav work with the internal GPS? Let's find out...

First, let's download and install Nokia Maps onto the 6650.

Go to http://maps.nokia.com and click download. You will see the screen below to choose your phone:


You won't see the Nokia 6650 on the list so choose the Nokia E50 (it's close to the 6650 as they're both portrait oriented). Although the Nokia 6650 runs S60 3rd Ed. FP2 like the N85, Nokia chose not to include the additional S60 packages needed to run the later versions of Maps. So we're stuck with Nokia Maps 1.2.

I connected the 6650 to my computer using a USB data cable (CA-101, not included with 6650) and installed it via Nokia PC Suite but I'm sure you can do it by Bluetoothing the SIS to the 6650:

Seeing the install message is a good sign it'll likely work

Opening Nokia Maps from the 6650, click Options > Map Options > Satellite Info and you'll see the screenshots below:

Satellites connection strength:

The dark blue shows I'm locked on!

Satellite relative positioning:

The darker blue are the locked satellites

With maps loaded on Nokia Maps and a GPS lock:


To avoid data charges for downloading maps I suggest turning off network use in Settings > Network > Use network = Never and pre-loading maps from your computer via Nokia Maps loader.

I was very surprised to find out the Nokia 6650's internal is open for other applications to use and it's a real GPS. Not some lame network based GPS. It's also a very fast locking GPS taking less than half the time of my N82. I'm very impressed with the Nokia 6650's GPS but too bad AT&T's Nav services will prevent the GPS from being the strong selling point of this phone.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the info. I picked this phone up yesterday as more of a phone to go along with my internet tablet and act as a tether. I just impressed with the fast GPS lock of this phone when messing with google maps (the AT&T nav subscription makes no sense to me). I was puzzled by the lack of GPS software on the phone and thought nokia maps may be the route but couldn't figure out which phone to download the software as. -salinmooch

Anonymous said...

Hi Eric.

Thanks a lot for all these information provided. I just bought 6650 and I was following i instructions on this page. I noticed that nokia has just added new maps for 6650 but when i install it , I receive error message that you need to first install base package!. Can you look into it?

thanks

Eric said...

@Anonymous #2: The AT&T 6650 can't run the newer versions of Nokia Maps as it's missing some required software packages found in other FP2 handsets. You'll have to stick with the old Nokia Maps 1.2 on your 6650.

Anonymous said...

One of the posters on Howard Forums claims he installed Maps 2.0 on 6650. Here's a link to his post
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?p=12223466#post12223466

Anonymous said...

I was also able to install Maps 2.0. File Nokia_Maps_2.0_2204_3.1.sis for Nokia E51 phone.

HogieWan said...

I installed the Maps 2.0 as well. After install the PC Suite software from Nokia site, it did an upgrade to the phone software, maybe that's the difference. After that, I used the PC Suite app installer to install the Maps software. Then I installed the Map Loader program on my PC and loaded up some maps for my state plus a few surrounding.

Unknown said...

You have to load 1.2 first. Use
Nokia_Maps_1.2_0702_s60_3.0.sis. Only after 1.2 has been loaded can you then load 2.0. Use Nokia_Maps_2.0_0701_3.2_u.sis . There are other versions out there but of the three I tried only this one worked. As of 7/2009 you could get it at:
http://nds1.nokia.com/files/support/global/phones/software/Nokia_Maps_2.0_0701_3.2_u.sis

phillip murphy said...

What version of the Nokia PC Suite should we be using for this? Seems they have one for ever phone...

Many thanks

Anonymous said...

I downloaded one of the above versions and installed it (2.0 I think)

After doing so, I was able to use the Nokia Maps Updater from the nokia maps website to update to Ovi Maps 3.0 and I am currently downloading the full US map set to my memory card.

nismo said...

hi, i am from to mexico, i have a 6650 from at&t, i´m installed the nokia mps 1.2 but i can´t get signal of the gps, is it normal?