Nokia to offer Smart2go free of charge

Nokia has announced that they will offer Smart2go free of charge on their website. Smart2go is a mapping and navigation platform that allows the user to load maps of more than one thousand cities around the world.

Despite being free of charge Smart2go has maps from 150 countries are supported. For 30 of them Nokia also offers a full turn-by-turn satellite navigation.

Smart2go not only tells the user where he is on the map but also points interesting places in the vicinity. Smart2go for free will even create routes to reach the desired destinations.

One advantage of Smart2go over other solution (like Google Maps) is that it doesn't require periodic contact with a server. Smart2go only has to download for free the map once. It will be stored on the smartphone memory card. There is also the possibility to download the bigger maps on a PC directly from Nokia website.

In addition to offer Smart2go free of charge, Nokia also gives the chance to turn the device into a full turn-by-turn voice navigation system. Users will have to pay though and the price is not known yet. Nokia just said it will be affordable. The company will offer various licenses so the customer can chose for how much time to use this navigation system (from a couple days up to three years).

The supported smartphones at first will be the one included in the Symbian S60 series and the one equipped with the Windows Mobile 5.0 OS. In the future Nokia plans to offer Smart2Go application free of charge on other OS platforms like Linux, PocketPC and other Windows Mobile devices.