Despite the sale of Nokia’s services and hardware business to Microsoft, Nokia Here maps platform remains with the Finnish company. Its not a part of the deal and won’t be transferred to Redmond. Nokia hasn’t forgot about this service, today it announced that offline maps will now be able to download incremental updates. Basically, what this means is that when an update to an offline map is available, the entire map won’t have to be downloaded all over again. Only the roads and other maps features that are included in that update will be downloaded.
The obvious advantage here is the data savings. Nokia estimates that on average, incremental updates to offline maps will consume about 85 – 90 percent less data and would therefore result in a much faster process for acquiring latest map updates to use offline. The Nokia Here incremental updates is being pushed out right now for all Windows Phone 8 smartphones that are running the latest firmware, which means the Amber update for Nokia devices and Windows Phone 8 GDR2 for other devices. To check if incremental updates are available for their device, WP8 users can go to the settings > applications > maps and tap on check for updates. Nokia hasn’t said if it is going to update Here for Android and iOS, it seems to be giving the priority to Windows Phone 8 devices.
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