To check it out, go to maps.google.com in your mobile browser, search for a location, and click on the “pegman” icon at the bottom right of the screen to access Street View.
While that sounds simple enough, the feature could definitely use some improvements. For example, it’s impossible to access Street View from the regular map view — you actually have to search for a specific location first for the pegman to become available. Furthermore, Street View opens in a new browser window, and always starts centered at a default location in a city, instead of your current location.
Finally, the zoom feature, present in the desktop version of Street View, is absent here.
All of the above makes the feature a lot less useful than it could be, but it’s a start. Unfortunately, on the iPhone it’s also an unpleasant reminder of how much better the feature might be if a native iOS app, which got replaced by Apple Maps in iOS 6, was available.
