Ovi Maps with New Content & Services Arrives at the Betalabs for Touch Phones

Another major services announcement at the Nokia World today was the launch of the Ovi Maps Beta for S60v5 (Touch Phones) at the Nokia Betalabs. This new beta brings with it a new starting screen giving you one touch access to a variety of new content and services from within Ovi Maps.

Announcing the new beta, the Maps team explains what all you can do with the new Ovi Maps^Beta -

All these services focus on your current location and nearby surroundings. My Position looks for your location and shows it on the map. Find places lets you search easily for cities, addresses and places with the new one-box search. Favourites allows you to save your personal map objects such as places and routes. Sign in with your Ovi account and synchronise your favourite places with Ovi to make your maps.ovi.com experience more personal. You can also synchronise your map objects from maps.ovi.com back to Maps on your device.

Our popular car navigation service, Drive, with voice and visual instructions, lane assistance and speed limit warners, comes now with text-to-speech feature for voice guidance including street names during navigation.

My personal favourite service, Walk navigation, takes you through dedicated pedestrian zones, shortcuts, stairways, plazas or pathways through parks and buildings. Now we are introducing voice guidance for Walk with voice instructions including street names during navigation.

Anywhere you go always take the weather with you, or rather real-time Weather information including a 5 day forecast for your current location or the one you go next. Additionally, check out Events for movies, concerts and venues around your location or other places you have found with the help of the Find places functionality.

For you guys, travellers and globetrotters, we’ve added premium editorial travel content by Lonely Planet and Michelin for over 1000 destinations. Find thousands of listings for sights, restaurants, hotels, shops, nightlife, and more. Look these places up on the map, and get there quickly and easily with pedestrian and car navigation.

Basically, What all is new in this release is :

• Weather - Get real-time weather information including a 5 day forecast for your current or any location found with the help of the Find places functionality.
• Michelin and Lonely Planet – Get dynamic access to premium editorial travel content for over 1000 destinations. Find thousands of listings for sights, restaurants, hotels, shops, nightlife, and more. Look these places up on the map, and get there with pedestrian and car navigation.
• Events - Check out the events on the map around your location or other places you have found with the help of the Find places functionality.

To know more about what all is new in this release, Watch this video Introducing the new Ovi Maps  -

Screenshots

The new startscreen offers one touch access to all the new content & services.

You can now access weather & events info from within the Maps view.

The new content & events view in Maps. This looks really impressive!

Smarter navigation options.

Ovi Maps^Beta is compatible with the following Nokia devices:

• Nokia N97
• Nokia N97 mini
• Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

You can download the sis file for the beta from this link – Download Ovi Maps Beta.

• Ovi Maps beta for mobile now available at the Ovi Store
• Nokia Launches Ovi Lifecasting Beta to Help You Share Your Memories Instantly on Facebook
• Shazam launches on Ovi Store with a free for use 100 days promo