As usual I was facebook’ing on my mobile when I noticed that my home page has something new (Google Mobile Home Page). As the title of the post suggests it was Google Maps with Street View. Clicking through the pages it forwards you on the download page where there are multiple downloading formats available depending on your mobile (this gets auto detected). Had to open the page in Pocket IE as on Opera mobile it is not detected properly. For windows mobile phone a CAB file is downloaded and installed and you are all ready to go.

After Google had shown street view in action on android phone may were eager to see how it will work on other mobiles. Well the working is more or less the same (except Accelerometer sensor: you have to rotate with fingers). Other than that it has a sleek interface and has multiple views just like any other Google map application (Satellite, Map and hybrid). You can tap  on any point that has street view maps and jump right into a street. Street view itself works exactly the same way it does on desktops. All this is integrated with GPS, sadly my Kjam has no internal GPS so for me “My Location” function didn’t work at all. Other than that comprehensive searching is available with auto complete. Another interesting feature is that you can search your Phonebook Contacts. All those contacts who have the address field filled, appear in the list (In Pakistan it can only give city level results). There is considerable phone integration as locations can be sent through sms saved as contacts etc. Direction functionality is quite detailed and it lets you see multiple things like roads with traffic integration, on foot distance and moving on a route in street view mode as well. Comprehensive help is available with the application so I wont go into detail. Over all its a good experience and a useful application. There is a surprise package as well. Some user generated content in terms of Place marks is also available for Pakistan . Here are few screenshots from my Kjam (I haven’t tried the Java App for this.)

A panoramic ( 360 degree ) street view

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