Our Latitude web app provides all the core functionality you might expect: you can see the location of your friends on a map and modify your privacy settings so that you control how your location is shared and with whom. In fact, if my friends and colleagues back in London haven’t yet noticed my absence, they’ll see in Latitude that I’m currently vacationing on the beach in Australia. Hi guys, remember me!?

We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.

[via msmobiles]

See below for the detail changelog

Symbian S60 devices

Major

• Auto-restart location updates: If you turn off your phone or it ran out of battery with Google Latitude automatic location updates enabled either in the background or with Maps open, Latitude will respect this choice and automatically restart location updates in the background when you next turn on your phone.
• Backlight timeout: The backlight will remain on when the driving directions list is open, routes are being viewed on the map, or the device is moving quickly with an active GPS connection.
• Force location updates: If you manually refresh your Latitude friends list, you’ll also force the update of your own location if automatic detection is enabled.
• When changing your photo icon picture in Latitude, you now have the option to take a new picture using your phone’s built-in camera.

Minor

• Many minor interface and layout issues have been fixed or changed.
• Cell ID (cell tower) location detection near two cell towers has been improved so that your location bounces less if you’re between two towers.
• Map centering when GPS is active has been fixed on some phones. Previously Maps may have defaulted to your location instead of a friend’s after you choose ‘Show on map’ for the friend in Latitude.
• Latitude friend photo icons have been fixed to properly indicate if a friend’s location is recent (blue outline) or old (gray outline).
• Previously, some friend photo icons remained blue even if the location was old. N82 and N95 devices: Installation file changes to reduce potential hangs during installation that have been reported for a small subset of these devices.
• N73 and N75: Maps for mobile will properly call a number when phone numbers are selected in search results. Previously, hangs may have occurred on these devices.
• E61, E61i, and E62 devices: Shortcut keys work properly using the standard numeric shortcuts. Previously, shortcut keys were not working as intended on these devices.

Known Issues

• Errors may occur if you are verifying a phone number in Latitude that has already been registered with another Google Account.
• N82 and N95 devices: we strongly encourage that you back up your device and consider upgrading to the latest device firmware version (see http://nokia.com/softwareupdate). A very small number of users report experiencing a device hang during installation, and we haven’t yet been able to reproduce this in the lab or determine the exact cause.
• For some S60 3rd ed. FP2 phones (Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, 6210 Navigator, 6220 Classic, 6650, N78, N79, N85, N96, N96-3), you may need to set a default destination using the following steps:
  1. Go to Settings > Connection > Destinations > Options > Default connection.
  2. Select “Internet” (if you have it) or whichever APN group you want it to use.

Windows Mobile devices

Major

• Background location updates: Google Latitude background location updating has been fixed and allows you to continue updating your location automatically in the background even when Maps for mobile is closed.
  • To enable this, choose to exit Maps from its main menu and when prompted, select ‘Yes’ to continue background location updates.
  • When in background location update mode, Latitude will default to cell ID (cell tower) location detection to preserve battery life. WiFi or GPS detection will not be available in background mode.
• Auto-restart location updates: If you turn off your phone or it ran out of battery with automatic Latitude location updates enabled either in the background (see above) or with Maps left open, Latitude will respect this choice and automatically restart location updates in background mode when you next turn on your phone.
• Force location updates: Manually refreshing your Latitude friends list also forces the update of your own location if automatic detection is enabled.
• Login errors: Several fixes completed to address multiple causes of login errors for Latitude, such as invalid certificates.
• Backlight behavior: Your device backlight should turn off according to your system settings when Maps or Latitude is left open in the background. Previously, Latitude may have kept your backlight on when in the background.
• Internal error: Selecting a friend in Latitude to see more info and options will no longer cause internal errors on some devices.

Minor

• Many minor interface and layout issues have been fixed or changed.
• Cell ID (cell tower) location detection near two cell towers has been improved so that your location bounces less if you’re between two towers.
• Map centering when GPS is active has been fixed on some phones. Previously Maps may have defaulted to your location instead of a friend’s after you choose ‘Show on map’ for the friend in Latitude.
• Friend photo icons have been fixed to properly indicate if a friend’s location is recent (blue outline) or old (gray outline). Previously, some friend photo icons remained blue even if the location was old.
• Photo uploading for your Latitude picture is enabled for .png files.

Known Issues

• Errors may occur if you are verifying a phone number that has already been registered with another Google Account.
• Username or password fields may be off screen or covered by the software keyboard. Login errors will occur if you proceed without entering a password.
• Cannot paste text into fields in Maps for mobile. On some devices, you may be able to use the software keyboard’s CTRL+V command to paste text into Maps as needed.

The Google Maps with Latitude is currently available in 27 countries. It can be installed on Blackberry, S60, and Windows Mobile, and will be available on Android in the next few days with the new firmware RC33. You can download it from the http://google.com/latitude with your mobile browser. The team is also working an iPhone version and it should be released very soon.

Check out the video demonstration below: 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

List of languages and countries supported below (as of today):

Languages:
Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukranian, and Vietnamese.

Countries:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.

[via Android Community]