Windows Phone: Mango Turn-By-Turn Navigation

One of the cool new features of the Windows Phone 7 Mango release (Windows Phone 7.5) is the posibility to use turn by turn navigation with voice guidance. This feature of Windows Phone Mango is integrated in the standard Bing Maps application and can use by developers from their own Windows Phone apps by the BingMapsDirectionsTask.

In my sample I have added two GeoCoordinate objects. One with my home place and the other with my working place at SDX AG. With the common concept of Windows Phone for interaction by using a Launcher or Chooser task you can then create a BingMapsDirectionsTask instance, set the locations as LabeledMapLocation to the start respectively end property of the BingMapsDirectionsTask and call the Show()-Method.

After this your application put in the background and the standard Bing Maps application will be called. Now you can use the standard turn by turn navigation features with voice guidance.

Conclusion

The new BingMapsDirectionsTask and turn-by-turn navigation features of the Bing Maps application of Windows Phone is a very cool function which will enable developers to build a new kind of Windows Phone applications. Furthermore all applications like “Where is my next bank or letter box” now can give the user the ability to give navigating instructions to this place.

 

Sample Code

private readonly GeoCoordinate destination;

private readonly GeoCoordinate target;

// Constructor

public MainPage()

{

    InitializeComponent();

    destination = new GeoCoordinate(49.907903, 8.510628); // Home

    target = new GeoCoordinate(50.139836, 8.742199); // SDX AG

}

private void NavigateButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    var bingMapsDirectionsTask = new BingMapsDirectionsTask();

    var destinationLocation = new LabeledMapLocation(

        "Home",

        destination);

    var targetLocation = new LabeledMapLocation(

        "SDX AG",

        target);

    bingMapsDirectionsTask.Start = destinationLocation;

    bingMapsDirectionsTask.End = targetLocation;

    bingMapsDirectionsTask.Show();

}