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Nokia To Offer Free GPS with Turn-by-Turn

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Free Navigation on your Nokia. Forever - Ovi MapsThe GPS stand alone device market keeps getting rocked. First Google announced its new Turn-by-Turn maps feature and the end of last year for its Android platform. Stocks for stand alone GPS makers took a tumble. Now Nokia is announcing that its Turn-by-Turn Ovi Maps will be free forever on its platform.

In addition to Turn-By-Turn, Ovi Maps also offers location aware social interaction. It’s available in 70 countries and 46 different languages with real-time traffic updates in 10 countries. Nokia is swatting at Google by claiming that its hybrid vector graphics technology provides a ten-fold data in addition to cost savings when compared to Google Maps and that it can work with no data connection by pre-loading maps into the phone.

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. ynohtna

    01/21/2010 at 10:05 am

    That’s huge,

    But I would still probably trust google map information and thus google searches rather than use ovi maps. However when travelling to another place, I would probably use ovi maps to save on roaming data fees.

  2. Stuart

    01/21/2010 at 12:17 pm

    Nokia purchased Navteq so they have very accurate maps. The North American maps were just 2 Gig so having them preloaded on the new smartphones will be a huge bonus that will really help european sales where traveling across borders won’t mean huge roaming fees.

  3. Jim

    01/21/2010 at 1:01 pm

    As a non US, non Euro resident, I am impressed at the reliability of Ovi Maps. Google Maps is OK but it constantly needs a data connection and you cannot pre purchase/download offline maps! Also with a small add in from my Cellular provider, I get street names with my turn by turn instructions on Ovi Maps.

    When Google provides offline maps to download I might consider using them

  4. ynohtna

    01/21/2010 at 1:24 pm

    I love the layers implementation on google maps… I have access to all my saved maps too… and traffic is free… I should give OVI a full try out now though… but I don’t really need turn by turn locally. I know where everything is :D

  5. xmangerm

    01/21/2010 at 1:53 pm

    Wow! This is some major news. I have been a Nokia/OVI maps users for a while now (on the Nokia N82) and this is just the icing on the cake. Hopefully my Samsung i8910HD uber smartphone should be able to run this in the future. Thank you Nokia:)

  6. Labor Law Attorney

    01/21/2010 at 6:38 pm

    They’re very proud of what they’ve delivered.

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