It has been a busy couple of weeks for the HERE team. We covered the big update for the Maps, Drive+ and Transit applications last week, but a couple of extra updates are noteworthy. Firstly, a bug fix to all of these apps to sort out issues some people were having with migrating across their old Nokia account favourites, secondly to announce a full version for Windows 8.1 on the desktop/laptop, and thirdly to officially debunk rumours flying round the web over the last few days about the HERE team giving up on Windows Phone development. See the quotes below.

From our initial story:

Updated today are the HERE trio of applications for Windows Phone 8, principally with the inclusion of support for a generic HERE account and the possible migration of your existing Nokia account-synced 'favourites'. In addition, there are new countries available and Drive+ is apparently now free for all, i.e. voice-guidance in real time for all (supported) countries for all users, regardless of device. 

'Today’s update of HERE Drive+ for Windows Phone brings voice-guided navigation for 18 new countries and territories: Algeria, Angola*, Bangladesh*, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Iraq, Libya, Mauritania, Mauritius, Nepal*, Paraguay, Saint Helena, Senegal*, Sri Lanka*, Suriname*, Zambia*, Zimbabwe*. This brings the total number of freely navigable countries to 118.

Additionally, we have updated HERE Maps, HERE Drive+, HERE Transit, HERE City Lens for Windows Phone, and HERE Maps for Windows 8.1 will soon follow. This brings a range of stability and performance improvements across all the apps and we have made HERE Transit and HERE Drive+ free not only for all Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones but also for Windows Phone 8.0. With the update, the apps will use the new HERE account to keep your Collections in sync across all HERE-powered devices and the newly reinvented here.com.'

From the updated HERE launch blog post:

Update 1: the new HERE for Windows 8.1 is now available in the store, download it now to use the HERE account on your tablet or PC.

Update 2: we have noticed some discussions in the blogosphere about HERE on Windows Phone. We want to clarify that we are committed to providing great products and consumer experiences for Windows based phones. We will continue to support our HERE apps to ensure that they will be compatible with future versions of Windows.

Good to know about the PC version, presumably this means that the HERE suite of applications are now 'universal' and that the desktop and phone versions will be updated in lock-step from here on in.

Secondly, sites were quoting a translated article referring to a HERE Maps guy talking up the iOS and Android versions. The update text above clearly demonstrates that the HERE team are going to carry on supporting and updating the Windows Phone version too. The confusion lies, I think, because the Windows Phone version is essentially 'done' and doesn't need much extra development, while the imminent/new iOS and Android versions are still maturing and are still requiring manpower thrown at them.

You may remember that I commented on all this months ago?

Obviously, to get the new versions of the applications, just 'check for updates' in Settings in the Windows Phone Store client.