Back in November, Nokia announced that it would be relaunching its maps service as Here. Despite its silly name, it was an effort on the part of Nokia to become a major player in the Maps app scene. Now the company is starting to roll it out to mobile devices.
Nokia announced today that its Here app services, which includes Drive, Maps and Transit, will be launching exclusively across Windows Phone 8. That being said, Nokia says the best Here experience will be had on its own Lumia hardware, including the recently announced Nokia Lumia 720 and 520.
The most exciting part about Here is the integration of Nokia’s AR technology. In essence, a user can hold the phone up, and have the name of restaurants and other locations displayed across the landscape. It might not be exactly useful in a real word setting, but it’s incredibly cool nonetheless.
Here Maps and other services are now available for Windows Phone 8.
Here is already available on iOS, and will be launching on Firefox OS later this year. An Android version was apparently available via Amazon’s Appstore for Android, but the link to it is longer working.