WisePilot Navigator Europe, a new satnav app, has just arrived on the Windows Phone Marketplace, delivering turn by turn directions for those without access to Nokia Drive.
In case you missed the memo, mobile phones are the new satnavs. Both Google and Nokia have offered free turn by turn directions out of the box on their smartphones for years, but Nokia’s impressive option, Nokia Drive, is only available on Lumia Windows Phone.
HTC’s Locations app for its Windows Phones also provides offline-mapping and voice guidance, but if you’ve got a Windows Phone from another brand, such as Samsung, LG or ZTE you’ll want to check out the newly launched WisePilot Navigator Europe instead. It stuffs in voice guidance, 3D and 2D worldwide maps, lane assistance, speed limit alerts, point of interest search and support for pinning addresses to the Windows Phone homescreen.
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Unfortunately, unlike Nokia Drive, Appello’s WisePilot Navigator Europe requires a data connection to download maps as you drive, so you won’t be able to use it abroad without racking up some heavy costs. But with the download standing at just 11MB, it does mean that it’ll sit nicely on a Windows Phone with limited storage, such as the ZTE Tania.
WisePilot Navigator marks the first third-party satnav app on Windows Phone, with big brand rivals such as TomTom and ALK’s CoPilot shying away from the platform so far (TomTom in fact has yet to produce a fully-featured Android app either), and could prove a big boost to the struggling also ran. We’ve reported before on the issues that the Marketplace has right now: a decent satnav app is a step in the right direction at least.
Currently, WisePilot Navigator Europe is on sale at £24.49 in the UK (with a 30 percent discount, so that will rise), and makes use of mapping data from Bing and NAVTEQ, the latter of which is owned by Nokia, and also provides the basis for Nokia Drive.
There’s no free trial or user reviews showing just yet, but if you do download it, give it a go and let us know how you get on in the comments.
