Nokia's HERE Maps team has announced a big data update for many countries, with building detail if available, plus a cleaner presentation, and clearer transit lines in some cities too. Plus the usual road updates - don't worry, the updates are incremental, you don't have to install whole countries all over again!

From the blog post:

It’s time, once again, for you to check for map updates on our mobile and Windows apps: the latest refresh to our map is being released today.

As previously, the apps only need to grab the changes to your downloaded maps from our servers to update themselves, not the whole country or state, so it shouldn’t take long.

There are additions and fixes in every continent, too many to practically list, so just download with the assurance that your map is fuller and more accurate than ever.

Two special new features do deserve extra consideration, though. They aren’t in every country by any means, yet – as you’ll see, they are quite labour-intensive additions – but they’re here for some and coming to many more of you in the future.

Building footprints

Historically, our maps have been first and foremost about roads. Because for car navigation that’s the most important thing you need to know. But our maps contain many more details, which we show contextually i.e. only when you need them the most.

Lately we’ve been showing the outlines of individual buildings in a growing number of cities – they’re actually already available in 11 countries in Europe and in the USA – with Belgium, Denmark, Italy and The Netherlands now added to the total with this latest release.

These ‘building footprints’, as they’re called, add extra detail to the map and can help you orient yourself more easily, especially when you’re on foot.

Take a look at these ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures to see the difference.

Old and beige

Fresh and new

...Under the surface, our latest maps also contain additional layers of information to describe the attributes of roads and POIs. This information is for autonomous and assisted driving solutions as well as custom enterprise apps. Regular users can’t see it, but there’s a lot more information in there than meets the eye.

Going into HERE Maps on your Windows Phone, you'll be immediately prompted that there are data updates available:

The 51MB incremental download was just for the UK, normally several hundred megabytes, but it's still clear that there's plenty of new content included.

Please note that you may need to restart HERE Maps in order to see the new changes on your maps. Note also that this update now applies to Android smartphones with HERE Maps beta installed. A strange, new cross-platform world, eh?