Apple’s own Maps app has been heavily criticized, and Google does not yet have a Maps app for iOS ready, so Nokia’s timing in offering an alternative on the iOS platform is good as it tries to build up its user base. Here has a few things going for it that Apple’s Maps don’t: offline availability, in-app public transit directions, and voice-guided turn-by-turn directions for walking.

But Here has its own quirks. The look of the maps aren’t as crisp and clean as Apple Maps. The Verge was able to take the app for a spin, and was impressed by some features, while disappointed in others, like the incomplete transit directions.

Incomplete transit directions and other missing data should be filled in the more people use Here — which is why getting on a widely used platform like iOS is so important to Nokia.

Here will eventually be available on Android and in Mozilla’s forthcoming Firefox OS.

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Enthusiast site Android Community noted the updates on Monday by way of the HandHeld Blog. In addition to the downloadable maps, the service — found at http://m.maps.nokia.com — also adds public transit directions to supplement the existing walking and driving navigation as well as points of interest (POI) and guides to the local area.

Nokia’s mapping service is arguably one of the best software products to come from the Finland-based handset maker, and this update makes it even better. Why else would Microsoft decide to integrate Nokia Maps in the Windows Phone platform going forward? I used the web version of Nokia Maps earlier on Monday, finding it to be so full-featured that it was almost difficult to believe it to be a web application.

The offline mapping mode is welcome, especially when many smartphone owners pay for set amounts of wireless data. Google, too, recently introduced downloadable maps, partially for this reason. Nokia’s implementation is somewhat limiting, though, at least in my short tests. The initial geographic area I wanted to map was too large, so Nokia Maps wouldn’t save it. I had to keep zooming and cropping before saving.

The end result was a reasonable size — about 15 square blocks of Philadelphia — and I had to boost the storage limits allocated to the service to get the 19 MB area map downloaded. Nokia calls these “neighborhood maps,” so if you’re planning to visit several areas, each neighborhood will have to be downloaded separately. That differs from Google’s solution, where I was able to grab a map of 10 square miles. Once you have a local map from Nokia stored on the device, you don’t have access to the guides and POIs, but you can zoom in for greater detail, just like Google’s version.

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