Now days when more and more mobile phones are equipped with both a good quality camera and a GPS receiver, there is no reason why not to combine the two and create images that the location where they were taken is embedded in them. Then, uploading the image to web albums services allows you to see the pictures on a nice map!

So now that I already explored other cool features of my Nokia, it is time to test the geotagging feature.

First of all, If you have Symbian series 60 3rd edition less than feature pack two (like N95), you can do it too! You just need to install Nokia’s Location Tagger application which will add this feature to your phone. According to their blog, you can also install it on devices without a built in GPS and use an external one connected via Bluetooth (like N73).

Back to the Nokia N85, when you’re using the camera, the device will automatically try to fetch the location from the GPS receiver. If the signal is strong enough, when you take a picture the location will be embed automatically. So there is nothing you should do except taking the picture.

When you browse your pictures on the phone you will get an indication if the image is encapsulating a location as well:

(notice the small satellite icon below the picture)

What’s next? Uploading the picture to a web album service that supports geotagging. There are two main options to do that, either by copying the picture to the PC and from there to the web, or a direct upload from the phone.

The built-in upload services are Flicker, vox and Ovi. If you want to use Picasa, Facebook and others, I recommend to install and use Shozu. Otherwise you are quite limited with the built-it services.

Note that only specific services support Geotagging. Flicker and Picasa are the main ones. For flicker, you need to adjust your account setting to enable using the image’s location attributes. So now that I’ve upload my image to flicker, I can see it directly on the map:

With Picassa, I will be able to see the location only if I have Google Earth installed on my PC, making it less useful but it looks cooler.

In conclusion, this feature has a great potential and is really improving your virtual photos albums. But unfortunately more time is required for additional services to full support it.