Yesterday at the Where 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, Nokia Maps head Michael Halbherr announced an exciting new addition coming to the Ovi portal - Nokia Maps. Nokia Maps, as I’m sure you’re familiar with, is Nokia’s GPS navigation software for devices, offering free maps and points of interest, with turn-by-turn voice guidance as a premium service. I’ve been using Nokia Maps, in addition to Google Maps Mobile, on my S60 devices for a while now and I really enjoy the different features.

Nokia Maps on Ovi brings a new level that will, in my opinion, make it a bit more user friendly, and bring it down a level to the consumer, as well. You’re able to login to your Ovi account and create routes on your desktop computer. You can also save points of interest on your device, and they’ll be synced back to your Ovi account, so that you can get more information on them when you’re on your desktop.

Though it won’t be officially available until September, this service is going to be infinitely useful for travelers, as they can now browse through a new city with the freedom and screen size of their desktop computer, decide what they want to see, even create the routes from their hotel, and then sync those back to their phone, for use on the go. It greatly reduces the amount of time you’ll spend typing things into your phone’s keypad, which may or may not be a pleasant experience.

There’s no mention of whether or not Maps on Ovi will be a premium service, though I’d bet that it will be offered as a freebie, and Nokia will continue to focus on navigation and city guides for premium subscriptions. Currently, Nokia Maps only works on S60-powered handsets, but a few S40 devices for Q3 have been announced with a new version, and other platforms have been promised since Nokia Maps was announced.

Here’s the launch video, which I think is fantastic:

Categories: Applications
Tags: features, gps, maps, Ovi