Sunday, February 3, 2008

Nokia Maps download links

A short foreword for my Italian readers: "Scrivo questo post in inglese in modo da poterlo pubblicare sui forum Nokia relativi all'argomento. Grazie."




CHANGELOG (updates)

20080217 - initial version
20080223 - fixed layout of list
20080223 - added links for maps 0.0.11h (nokia maps 2.0beta, map loader 1.3.5.0)
20090114 - removed old links and added 0.0.13h (nokia maps 2.0, map loader 2.0.2.2)





I am a happy owner of a Nokia 6120 Classic mobile phone. I have been looking around for a mapping solution and found Nokia Maps (based on smart2go technology). I think it is really great to be able to download the client and the maps themselves for free!

However, the Nokia Map Loader (v1.3) is way behind my expectations. The only two things that can be done are:
  1. Download a map onto the memory card (inserted into a SD slot or into a phone connected via USB).
  2. Delete all maps in the memory card.
This means that if I want to remove one map out of n, I have to delete n and download n-1 again. Now this is not good. After reading the useless Nokia Maps FAQ and a very useful post on the Nokia Forums, I started looking at how the Nokia Map Loader tool works.

The tool downloads the maps as a zip file from http://static.s2g.gate5.de/maploaderzip/0.0.7h/[NUMBER].zip to a temp folder, and then unzips the content to the memory card. [NUMBER] is an ID, each country has its own. The question is, how are IDs to countries mapped?

I downloaded Fiddler (great tool, highly recommended!) and started analyzing some HTTP traffic.

First request/response:


Now, these long strings make absolutely no sense until you look at them as HEX strings and try converting them. This makes them more human readable:



And, after some hex parsing....




Maps (Nokia Maps 2.0 - Map Loader 2.0.2.2 - Maps 0.0.13h)






Voices (same for all versions)



This list has been built by analyzing data (unencrypted HTTP traffic) that is available to anyone. In no way has Nokia software been disassembled, reverse engineered, or extended in any way. It is not my intention to infringe any Nokia patent. If this has been done it is not intentional and I am willing to discuss the removal of this information.