We were recently telling you how great Ovi Maps was in a GPS applications comparison article, but we didn't know that Nokia would make a great announcement today and make the application entirely free! Although Maps were completely free, turn-by-turn navigation on Ovi Maps wasn't as you needed to pay a little fee in order to use your phone as a real navigation device. Not only Nokia decided that turn-by-turn navigation would become free, they also made all their premium content available for everyone without any fee, including traffic information and city guides. Therefore, willing to compete with Google's new Android GPS application, Nokia now offers Walk and Drive navigation as well as Traffic information, Safety Camera warnings and free Lonely Planet and Michelin guides for free and becomes with no doubt the best GPS application for Symbian devices.

Even though many people used the Beta application available through Nokia Betalabs, this new release is the final and stable application and differs a little bit from the beta software that was available lately. Indeed, not only all of its content is now free, the application's layout is also slightly different and looks even more user friendly. New features have appeared (or have been integrated) with this new release, such as the implementation of the Livecasting feature that allows you to post your location in your social feeds like Twitter and Facebook. New maps have also been integrated, especially satellite ones, which make pedestrian navigation much easier.

Of course, the application still offers 3D landmarks, which make navigation more fun and easier. Other services are there as well, such as weather and even local events so that you may be informed of what's going on around you; and just in case you want to go there, simply tell Ovi Maps to give you directions to your destination. However, the new application doesn't have features Nokia announced when the application was still in beta, especially Text to Speech, feature many users were expecting. Also, even though the application is completely free, not all Nokia devices are yet able to handle it as it is only available for the N97 Mini, 5800 XpressMusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, E52, E55, E72, 5230, 6710 Navigator, 6730 Classic and X6 for now. Nevertheless, Nokia told us it should be available on January 28th for the N97 classic and it's likely to be integrated in a new firmware (that people have been expecting since the end of December). Concerning the N900, the device will also feature free navigation soon, but not immediately as the application is not the same for Maemo and Symbian. Finally, all new Nokia phones equipped with a GPS will come with this free version of Ovi Maps preloaded.

This announcement makes it obvious that the Finnish manufacturer wanted to compete with Google's new GPS solution for Android. However, Nokia's service is much better than the one offered by Google in many ways: The first one is the fact that Ovi Maps doesn't require any Internet connection to guide you as you can download maps directly on your device and stay offline. Also, Ovi Maps features data for more than 180 countries and can handle turn-by-turn guidance in 74 countries and 46 different languages, when Google's GPS only works within the US and is only English-enabled. Finally, even though both applications support favorites sync, Google's application isn't able to publish your favorite places to Twitter and Facebook, when Nokia's can do it in a few seconds. The only feature that people may feel is missing compared to Google's GPS software is StreetView, which is said to be coming directly in Ovi Maps during 2010!

To finish, here is a bunch of videos you might want to watch to get a better clue of what Ovi Maps can offer, now for free!