Here Maps App coming to all Windows 8.1 Devices Very Soon

Here, Nokia’s mapping and location service has announced that the Here Maps Windows 8 application, currently only available for the Lumia 2520 will soon be available for all Windows 8.1 devices, including desktops, laptops and tablets free of charge from the Windows App Store.

As with the previous version of the app it is an all-in-one mapping solution, combining vector, satellite and 3D maps, points of interest, search and route planning. Complete country maps can also be downloaded for offline use, just like you may be used to doing on Windows Phone 8 smartphones.

There’s also a long list of improvements compared to the initial version.

First of all: speed. The offline maps load as quickly as your computer can manage, of course, so it’s a lot faster than using a website for navigation. But there are also speed improvements to the online portions. City pages, for example, now load up to four times faster, thanks to the use of progressive rendering and some clever optimisations to the data transfers.

Second, you can still use your touchscreen to control HERE Maps, and now you can also use your mouse and keyboard, which is a more useful option for most desktop PC users.

Third, this release supports our latest high-resolution satellite imagery. As you can see from the ‘before and after’ image below, this makes a pretty considerable impact on visibility at high zoom levels.