Nokia brings lifetime free turn-by-turn navigation and Lonely Planet guides to its smartphone lineup

by Scott Carmichael (RSS feed) on Jan 21st 2010 at 2:30PM

Just last week, I wrote about the Nokia Ovi map service - and today, Nokia gave me one more reason to be impressed. As of today, the Nokia turn-by-turn navigation service will be available for free to all Nokia Smartphone owners.

There are one or two exceptions, but if you have a current generation Nokia device, you can leave your GPS unit at home.

Nokia is not the first to offer free navigation, Google announced it as a beta service in their maps application on Android devices, but unlike the Google offering, the Nokia navigation app does not require a data connection as all maps are stored locally.

It gets even better - because Nokia is also offering free Lonely Planet guides, free Michellin guides, free events guides and more. All this content used to be "premium", but is now free as an add-on to the map application. And best of all - the maps, and all map updates will be free forever.

Next week, we'll will bring you a full review of the free Nokia navigation application on their popular 5800 Navigation Edition smartphone. If you can't wait - head on over to our friends at Engadget for their hands-on with the new free navigation app.

Filed under: Gadling Gear Review