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BlackBerry Maps has been extended to 34 new countries including Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, New Zealand, The Philippines and Taiwan. There are still a few regions such as North Africa, the Middle East and East Asia, and Western Latin America that are not covered but I’m sure we’ll see announcements about coverage in these areas soon enough.
Another announcement from the BlackBerry Maps team is that they have optimized the visual appearance of the maps with a a stronger rendering engine as well as with a new color scheme. In this new visual appearance you’ll also find points of interest (POI) databases for hospitals, universities/colleges, police stations, train/subway stations, shopping centers, parking, parks and airports. See the above diagram for an idea of the changes.
With these new adjustments, is it enough to use BlackBerry Maps over something like Google Maps? The BlackBerry 6 integration is helpful and makes the process more streamlined, so perhaps native will always win in the end.
