Ovi Maps makes summer travel easier and more fun

27 May 2010, 6:56pm

Espoo, Finland - Ovi Maps, the free walk and drive navigation service from Nokia, announced new partnerships that deliver more relevant information on more points of interest making travelling easier than ever. With summer holidays fast approaching, the updated Ovi Maps gives travelers and locals alike the ability to find the most interesting places and sites in the area making traveling less about getting from A to B and more about enjoying everything in between.

Ovi delivers unique mobile experiences that mix content with the best location, social networking and connectivity services and is the go to-place for discovering, sharing and enjoying lifestyle content and entertainment, all from a Nokia smartphone. Â

New partnership with Qype delivers community based recommendations

Ovi Maps now includes Qype, Europe's biggest portal for local community-based reviews, helping people find new places wherever they are, leaving nothing overlooked.

Initially offering information on more than 20,000 cities, the Qype community enriches Ovi Maps with hundreds of thousands of reviews and recommendations from locals and travelers on many European hotspots like cafes, shops, spas and hotels, giving the inside track before arriving. And, with a new post added to Qype every 40 seconds, people are assured to have the latest information to help them make the best choices no matter what they are looking for.

More tailored and personal trips

In total,Ovi Maps now offers Nokia smartphone users access to more than 25 million points of interest worldwide. Whether people are looking for a souvenir shop or a youth hostel, trips can be personalized and planned right down to the last detail with map data from NAVTEQ and city guides from Lonely Planet, WCities and Michelin. Agreements with leading directory companies such as telegate in Germany, Turkey Yellow Pages and Yell Publicidad-Páginas Amarillas in Spain make it even easier than before to find the closest pharmacy, cash machine, shop or service. Hotel booking services such as HRS and Expedia make it easy to find a place to stay.

In-car navigation made easier

For people planning a road trip, Nokia has started to include car kits with new smartphones in-the-box* at no extra cost which makes finding new places and navigating whilst driving safe and easy. And, with the added convenience of pedestrian routes for exploring cities on foot, swapping the phone from car to pocket makes navigating around new places easier, no matter how people choose to do it.

Holidaymakers can plan routes before leaving the house, on a computer or laptop and simply upload them onto a Nokia device to use when abroad. This saves time searching for routes when out and about and enables people to use maps in offline mode, reducing roaming costs when traveling in foreign countries.

The latest version of Ovi Maps (3.04) is available to download for free from the link below.

* Nokia now supplies car kits in-the-box with nine of its smartphones. A car holder and car charger are included with the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition, Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia 6710 Navigator, and the Nokia X6. A car holder is now included with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia E52, Nokia E72 and Nokia 5230.

Ovi Maps (3.04) free download

Geo: International