What a great idea:Nokia has teamed up with Lonely Planet to bring their travel guides to select Nokia Mobile Phones.More after the link.
Nokia phones with support for the free "Maps 2.0" application can purchase and download Lonely Planet guides directly to their phone. Each guide costs $13.99 which is slightly cheaper than their paper versions, which normally sell for around $18 each.
Lonely Planet currently has 100 different guides available for mobile use, with more on the way. By combining the GPS receiver built into many current Nokia phones, you can make the move from paper guides, to an advanced guide with turn by turn directions. Of course, for some people there is no replacement for a good old paper guide full of scribbled notes and bookmarks.
I for one would readily give up the scribbled notes and bookmarks (that's what a Moleskine is for, right?) in order to lighten up my load of travel reading. Combining the interaction of GPS with guide books is a great idea and might even be better than having an eBook version of the travel guide. I can see pros and cons to both. If you want to read a long article on the history or background of the location you're in, I'd probably prefer doing so on an eBook reader.
Having said that, 90% of what I use Lonely Planet for is for finding good places to eat and sleep and figuring out a fun itinerary for wherever I'm going. A phone version would be perfect for this. Combining the GPS would certainly help with coming up with spontaneous ideas for what to do once I've reached my travel destination.
Hopefully, Lonely Planet will come out with both phone and eBook versions of their travel guides, so people can decide on our own which version they would rather have. Depending on my destination, I might even be inclined to buy both versions. (If I spent hundreds or thousands of dollars getting somewhere, I'd readily be willing to spend an extra $15 or $20 to ensure I knew how to best enjoy my time there.)
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