If you’ve been paying NokNok close attention over the past couple of weeks (of course you have), you may have spotted our RAC Traffic app reviews for the Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia 700. We took to the Nokia Store to review the traffic app on both a Windows Phone and Nokia Belle phone to discover on which platform the app is better. Read on to see which version came out on top.
Read our RAC Traffic App review for the Nokia Lumia 800
The RAC Traffic App is a free service that you can download for free from the Nokia Store, designed to help you beat the traffic jams by showing you which roads and motorways the journey-ruining incidents are taking place.
We wanted to discover whether you get the same experience across different platforms. With that in mind we grabbed hold of a Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone and a Nokia Belle-equipped Nokia 700 to find out.
So, which is better? We agreed that RAC Traffic does its job, and is definitely a worthy app, but one with a lot more potential, and in need of an update. However there were some issues with the way RAC Traffic performed on our handsets.
On a Nokia 700, for example, we found that the RAC Traffic app handily maps your vicinity so that you could home in on potential traffic delays nearby. On a Nokia Lumia 800 it was a different story. From a location in Devon, we found that the RAC Traffic app seemed to think that we were in the Peak District, miles north of where we actually were.
This meant we had to scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and then scroll some more just to peep the traffic in our surrounding area - our biggest gripe with the Windows Phone version. It never did guess our correct location.
To the Windows Phone version’s credit, it does have a ‘My Routes’ feature letting you add your route, or find a quicker route to your destination, although this does not suggest any alternative routes should your journey face closures along the way. We also found that to use it you have to pin a shortcut yo your route via the Windows Phone menu and access it from the homescreen.
Read our RAC Traffic App review for the Nokia 700
A common bugbear was the Map Options. Here you can choose to look for ‘Incidents and Delays’ or ‘Roadworks and Planned’ roadworks, but unfortunately never both at the same time, which would only seem to add extra time to our journey and/or journey planning. RAC actually got back to us to say the following (thanks for getting in touch!):
“The reason for separating incidents and roadworks display is due to the fact that we've found out during testing that the traffic incident data sets would sometimes take too long to download when the handset is in a limited reception area (or on EDGE). Hence for better usability we decided to separate the two - something had to give, but hopefully it's not too much of a deterrent as our aim is to provide top notch traffic updates and we believe the app delivers that.”
The ability to call the RAC in the event of a breakdown is another handy little feature, but not an essential one - you could just as easily have the number stored in your contacts list anyway, or call direct enquiries and ask to be put through.
Conclusion:
That aside, we do like the RAC Traffic App. It has a well designed interface that looks the same on both Nokia Belle and Windows Phone, so it’s nice to have a little bit of uniformity, there. But in general we found the user experience a little too stop/start for our liking. With an update and a couple of tweaks to speed things up, this could be a great app, for both Windows Phone and Nokia Belle.