5 Features you Probably Didn't Realise about OVI Maps Voice Navigation

Its been a great week playing with the Nokia E72's OVI maps with the newly announced free GPS voice navigation now available on the phone (read more here). So let's have a look at some of the things that I have been particularly impressive, which you may not know about the OVI maps 

Speeding alerts Whilst some people may find this quite annoying, for those that do not like speeding tickets and multanova speed cameras, Nokia has pre-loaded speed limits on all streets it seems in Australia. When you are driving more than 10km/hr over the speed limit, the phone will say "Observe speed limit" once and only once (no nagging). So you now have no excuse that you didn't know you were speeding. 

1. Automatic zooming As you are driving, your map will continue to update with your environment. When you drive faster, the map will zoom out so that you can see the streets coming up in a more timely way. When you slow down, the map will zoom in closer. That was very impressive! 

2. House numbers When you are not using turn by turn navigation, the phone will show you the house numbers that you are passing. This makes it so much more useful, rather than straining at letter box numbers in the dark. 

3. Left or right, quick! One of the problems when people give you directions is that sometimes they don't tell you that you need to turn left or turn right early enough for you to do so safely, without the car behind you ramming your backside or horning you for your seeming incompetence. I compared a Garmin GPS voice navigation with the Nokia one and found that the voice on the Nokia GPS spoke faster, which means I could know the direction to turn faster than using the Garmin. 

4. Driving home With two presses of the keypad, you can find your way home using the Nokia OVI maps from anywhere in your city. 

5. GPS Signal Lost Its good when you are driving along and rather than realising 10 kilometres down the road that your GPS signal is gone, the phone actually tells you when it can no longer detect your current location. It also tells you when GPS connection is restored. 

In case you thought some of the above features were not good enough, here's one more.. 

6. Very quick recalculating routes Another great feature of Nokia Maps new free navigation is the speead at which it will recalculate the route to your destination when you miss a turn. You can continue to drive with peace of mind that the program will quickly come up with an alternative route and continue giving you directions.. so don't look down on the phone, hold your head up high and keep driving :)

Hope you found this