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

Nokia announces FREE Voice Navigation for Nokia phones!

"Global Navigation is now Free! Forever!"

- Arshia Varlet, Marketing Manager, Nokia (21/1/2010)

Nokia has just announced that voice navigation is going to be made free for all Nokia phones that can run the new OVI Maps. This new version of Ovi Maps is immediately available for download for these 10 Nokia handsets, with more Nokia smartphones expected to be added in the coming weeks:

• Nokia N97 mini
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
• Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition
• Nokia E52
• Nokia E55
• Nokia E72
• Nokia 5230
• Nokia 6710 Navigator
• Nokia 6730 classic
• Nokia X6

Amongst other things OVI Maps now allows you to see the current weather and upcoming events in the city that you are in. One of the most commonly asked questions over SMS is "Where are you now?" OVI Maps now allows you to even share your current location to friends on Facebook, taking social networking to another level and in many ways, away from the computer and back to real life. Upgrade to the new Ovi Maps by heading over to this website. It is only an 8MB download.

So how much data does navigation use?

 Arshia Varlet from Nokia explained in the online press conference:

Here are some real life examples to give an indication of the amount of data that could be used. These numbers naturally vary depending on the density of the road network, amount of 3D landmarks etc.

• Get A-GPS fix and view your location in your home country with preloaded maps: 4 kB
• Search and view Empire State Building with preloaded maps: 50 kB
• Search and browse map in one city in 3D map mode: 2-6 MB
• Create and show a route from Place A to Place B (56 km): 30kb
• Drive through the created route: 0 kB
• Drive 100 km with no preloaded maps: 5.1MB

The advantage of being able to download the map also means a massive data saving for those on a tighter data allowance (eg in Australia). 





If you are looking to upgrade, we recommend $29 cap plan with Three for the Nokia E72. Read some of the reviews in the more recent posts about the Nokia E72. So what are your thoughts? Leave your comments below. 

Nokia VIP Invitation.. to what?

We have just received this virtual event invitation from Nokia. What will it be about? stay tuned..

Turns out this was the invitation to the online press conference where Nokia announced that their turn-by-turn navigation features for Nokia Ovi Maps would be made free. Forever. Read more here

How could US$199 be spent to better your local community? - E72 Responsiveness Challenge

As you know, we received a big perspex box with the new Nokia E72 inside. The phrase "how you respond is who you are" is the basis for Nokia's Responsiveness Challenge. My fellow bloggers and I were given the question, what would you do with US$199 to better your community? 


For me, coming from a prosperous nation such as Australia, US$199 is slowly buying less and less. However, Australia has a growing problem.. weight. One idea for a community project with $199 would be to buy 20 basketball chain nets and install them on neighbourhood basketball courts. I can imagine the excitement many young ballers would have on their faces when they discover their local ring now has a chain net. Maybe I would stick a "Nokia Responsiveness" sticker on the backboard if the money came from Nokia :)


Many of you come from various parts of the world and so I thought it would be good for you to give a little back to the internet community by responding to this challenge.. how would YOU use US$199 to better your local community? If you are able to film a response, leave a link to your video on YouTube in the comments below. Here's a video that a few of us put together for Nokia. How will you respond?