Nokia now offers Free on-device Navigation (with Ovi Maps)

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by Clinton Jeff | on January 21st, 2010 | 9 comments

Looks like this might be the Big Nokia Ovi News today. Navigation will now be free on Nokia’s Ovi Maps and smartphones that support it.

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia will offer free navigation on its smartphones around the world, following a similar move from Google the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Thursday, citing the Finnish company.

Google started in late 2009 to offer free navigation on Motorola’s Droid model smartphones in the North American market.

“Nokia used to charge for navigation packages that included turn-by-turn directions. That all goes away now. Now you can get turn-by-turn directions covering 74 countries in 46 languages as well as detailed maps for 180 countries,” the report said.

Nokia offering free navigation on some 20 million smartphones is set to hurt key players on the global navigation market, including TomTom and Garmin. Nokia was not immediately available for comment.

[via: Reuters]

This is seriously BIG news for people like me who love and depend on using Ovi Maps.

Good move Nokia. Good move.

Edit: You can now download the Free Ovi Maps version from Nokia.com/Maps.

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Clinton Jeff

Clinton is currently based in New Delhi, India and is executive editor for UnleashThePhones. He is responsible for all editorial decisions, and covers all forms of Mobile things. Cj is addicted to caffeine, social media, and technology. Always up for a good conversation, you can reach him through the contact form, his website, on Google Plus or on Facebook or Twitter: Follow @clintonjeff

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Comments (9)

adityasinghvi Thursday - 21 / 01 / 2010 Reply

hmmm we now are getting somewhere with where this announcement is going to go...
chupchap Thursday - 21 / 01 / 2010 Reply

About time and smart move!
alastairtaylor1 Thursday - 21 / 01 / 2010 Reply

wait i have an e71 can i not get it free?
apurvgupta Thursday - 21 / 01 / 2010 Reply

Are 3d maps and buildings also free with it?
Clinton Jeff Thursday - 21 / 01 / 2010 Reply

Yup. I should think so :)
VISHNU Friday - 22 / 01 / 2010 Reply

it is not woking on my nokia e75 when i start software goes for updatees and shown this " this is a premimum service & asking to buy the service" I am located in New Delhi (India)
calumg Sunday - 24 / 01 / 2010 Reply

Nokia had to do something as their S60 operating system is looking pathetic in comparison to Maemo, iPhone and Android. Unfortunately I have an S60 device which isn't listed (a N82) and navigation is NOT FREE on this device, even though it's S60 running Ovi maps 3.0.1. I hope this is just a glitch until Nokia roll out Ovi maps 3.03 for the N82.
ju11 Monday - 25 / 01 / 2010 Reply

I prefer n82 to iphone, but the maps that came with it were rubbish ("Continue for a while" [how long please?], "Change the motorway" [What to? Seriously though, to which other motorway? North or South?])! I hope that the new version is better and becomes free on the n82 too.