By PCMag Staff

January 18, 2006

The Godzilla of search engines now offers cell phone users one of its many handy services. Google Local on Mobile (GLM) has all the power and cool mapping tools of the desktop version, and it's free. It stumbled some in testing, but the clarity of the maps and depth of information impressed us.

We downloaded the client directly to our test phone, the Sprint MM-A880 from Samsung. We were up and running in minutes, but often you must use a very specific wording or entry style to get results. When you catch on, though, the service is easy to use.

In your results, you can see detailed information about a business, switch to satellite view, and more. Scrolling in maps is mostly quick and easy. If you have a phone that is not supported, you can send Google a text-message query using 46645 or enter two addresses for driving directions.