No sooner has the gorgeous Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone arrived and Nokia is already showing off the next great tool it will soon bring to Windows Phones, such as the Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710. Nokia City Lens is a handy augmented reality app, built to make it easier to find Points of Interest near you wherever you go.
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While Nokia City Lens is currently in beta development stage, that didn’t stop Nokia from demonstrating its great features to the press at CES 2012 in Las Vegas last week. And of course it was shown off on the beautiful 4.3-inch screen of the new Nokia Lumia 900, for best effect.
Nokia City Lens uses the built-in camera of your Nokia Lumia Windows Phone to create an augmented reality overlay view of your surroundings when you look through the camera and show you, at a glance, where to find the nearest Points of Interest near you, making it quick and easy to locate Points of Interest no matter where you travel.
For example, you could tap the ‘Hotels’ option on Nokia City Lens, then hold your Nokia Windows Phone up and scan the horizon to instantly see exactly where all the hotels near you are located. Then, with a quick tap of any of those hotels, you can access its full details, including contact information.
Then, just as easily, you can open up your Nokia Drive and Nokia Maps apps and be navigated right to the door, all from within your Nokia Windows Phone, removing the need for installing loads of third-party travel and navigation apps and making for a single, unified user experience on your Nokia Lumia handset.
Ever since we started using Nokia Drive on our Nokia Lumia 800, our old sat-nav device hasn’t seen the light of day, other than to occasionally find Points of Interest. So, once Nokia City Lens arrives out of beta stage on our Windows Phones, the poor old thing will be out to pasture once and for all.
And by the looks of the video demo of Nokia City Lens, while there are clearly some minor usability tweaks needed at this stage, the interface looks great and the app seems to operate just fine, so we can’t wait to give it a full hands-on test when it arrives later in the year on our Nokia Lumia Windows Phones.
For now you can check out the Nokia City Lens CES 2012 demo video below and why not let us know what you think of it and Nokia’s great Drive and Maps navigation apps, by posting in the Comments below?
Watch the Nokia City Lens beta app on Nokia Lumia 900 at CES 2012 video below: