The HERE Maps team has announced a big data update for many countries - don't worry, the updates are incremental, you don't have to install whole countries all over again! In the UK, my England map involved a update measuring a few tens of Megabytes for a 400MB country data set, for example. The main improvements this time are for Belarus, Barcelona and Brazil, i.e. a number of 'b's....

From the HERE announcement:

The beauty of a digital map is that it can be updated regularly to reflect the constant changes taking place around the world. In fact, we make millions of changes to our maps every day. There are so many that we couldn’t possibly list them all in one article so we’re going to highlight the most significant ones, from Belarus to Barcelona to Brazil.

We significantly improved our coverage in Belarus, especially in cities and the roads connecting them. This has mostly been achieved by the passionate local mapping community, who have mapped 22,000 kilometres and added 11,000 POIs with HERE Map Creator.

Also, maps for Barcelona and the surrounding area have just received a sweet update for the summer time. When you activate the transit view you can see commuter train lines (Rodalies de Barcelona) in addition to the previous coverage of Metro and FGC lines.

In Brazil, we made it possible to download more granular maps, requiring less space on your phone, to aid both locals and tourists alike. Previously the country had been split into 5 territories but now you can download 32 smaller packages corresponding to local regions and states. So if you want to go to the state of Acre in northern Brazil, you no longer need to waste valuable phone space with the whole north region of the country.

Speaking of countries you can download, you can now find the British Indian Ocean Territory in the package for India and thePitcairn islands in the Australia/Oceania one. If you’re heading to Antarctica you may want to know that South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands are now listed under South America.

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

If not prompted, you can check your own phone by going again into HERE Maps and then tapping '...'/'download maps'/'update current maps', as usual.

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