The Ovi Maps team have been working hard to extend the range of phones that are compatible with the all new Ovi Maps service — that’s the service, if you recall — that launched to basically kill the personal navigation device market more or less overnight. You can now get free voice-enabled navigation and driving directions for almost any country you’d care to name on your E71 and E66.
This is good news for the legions of 71 and 66 users. Bad news for TomTom’s share price. Again.
I’d like to draw your attention to the Nokia press release announcing this news. Look how personal it is. I really do like this personable style:
GLOBAL – You spoke, we listened: Free walk and drive navigation is now available for the Nokia E71 and Nokia E66. The latest version of Ovi Maps with free walk and drive navigation has been available on a range of devices such as the Nokia E72, Nokia N97 mini, and X6 since January. After listening to customer feedback though, the Ovi Maps team has created a version that works on Nokia E71 and Nokia E66.
People will be able to use Ovi Suite to side load the latest country maps onto their devices so they can enjoy offline map browsing alongside free navigation. The process of making the latest version of Ovi Maps available for existing devices is quite involved, but the team managed to include complete navigation functionality. Due to technical constraints in back porting the app to existing devices, unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to offer further premium content such as Guide Michelin and Lonely Planet guides. These two devices will also be the last of our S60 3.1 and older devices to sport this version of Ovi Maps. But every upcoming Nokia Smartphone will come with free walk and drive navigation out of the box.
These two Eseries devices join the recently compatible Nokia N86 8MP.
The update is available now from Nokia.com/maps, and will also be available in Ovi Store.
Ovi Maps compatible devices include the Nokia N97, 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, Nokia N86 8MP and (with slightly different functionality) the Nokia E71, and Nokia E66.
Head over to www.nokia.com/maps to download the update.
I have found a huuuuuge ignorant mistake in Ovi Maps 3.03 update! There is no way to search for an address!!! Yes there is the search bar but if you don’t know the correct spelling of the address you’re screwed! Before you only needed to know 2 first letters and it would narrow your search down which you could scroll down and select, now that very important feature on any modern navigation system is a MUST and they just went ahead and removed that feature!!! Can Nokia ever get anything right?
No E75 support? I may be wrong but I think the E75 ships with S60 3.2 which the press release seems to imply will be missed out, as after S60 3.1 “every upcoming Nokia Smartphone” will come with free Ovi navigation pre-installed. I hope I am wrong as not supporting the E75 would be a pretty serious omission.
Finally got it on my E71 – super.
I cannot help thinking the PC was needlessly involved in the process – why couldn't I get the 5MB .sis OTA?
And the 150MB UK maps file – why not via WiFi? Nokia *know* I have WiFi.
Bah.
/m