City Lens superimposes restaurant and store information over the camera view on Nokia Lumia phones
Nokia City Lens – augmented reality
At yesterday’s launch of the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 Windows Phones, Nokia also released the beta of the hot City Lens app.
City Lens takes Google+ Local and Yelp and turns them upside down.
Instead of navigating a list of businesses nearby, you simply start the app, turn the Lumia sideways and it puts data about the business over the real picture. City Lens is augmented reality.
Watch the video and the concept gets explained. It’s an awesome app.
That is definitely cool. When I am looking for a new restaurant for supper it’s usually a spur of the moment thing. “Where can we get supper?”
City Lens gets rid of lists and typing. It makes recommendations that start where you are. Buddhist monk Pema Chodrin would approve.
I use Google+ Local (formerly Google Places). You have to navigate screens telling Google what you want – restaurant, saved places, coffee, bars, gas station, hotels, attraction or pizza.
Then you get a list and scan through them based on distance, rating etc. When you pick a place, there is the map thing about where the choice is located.
More times than enough it recommends the same restaurants even when there are other good restaurants closer. Yelp is about the same. Both have too many menus and lists to navigate.
It’s much smarter to start from where you are.
City Lens is available for all Lumia phones as a download. For more information about City Lens, check this blog.
The Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 with Windows Phone 8 are expected to ship about the same time as Windows 8, on October 26th, 2012.
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