Nokia gives map & navi app for free

By Vivek | February 8th, 2007 at 04:10 pm ET         

Nokia giving stuff for free? Can you believe that when the company is known for selling high-end phones in the $500 range? Well the statement is true, but you will get what you paid for.

What we get? - Nokia today made its smart2go mapping and navigation platform free for download. The platform is supposed to allow for mapping and routing in over 150 countries and has support for full turn-by-turn satellite navigation in over 30 countries. The application will be downloadable from Saturday, February 10th, and would initially support selected Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices. To get this application on your mobile you first need to install the MapLoader on your PC, and than transfer maps for selected regions onto your mobile phone. This part takes care of the route planning. If you want to get turn-by-turn navigation, you still need to pay for it. Nokia will basically sell navigation licenses for certain region and period of time. Read - varied rates for varied locations. More value added guides can be bought depending on your need and location.

Why free? - Reasons for going open with the download are not sure, but definitely stem from the fact that lot of people are having issues with getting the app to work and when it works, follow the driving directions. As usual few searches on Google reveal a lot about smart2go. Read this, this, and this among the few that I found. So instead of waiting around for the product to get it fixed, give it to users for free. Maybe introduce a UGC feature at a later time to get data updated for free.

Links:
smart2go