Driver Editions of popular handsets now available from Nokia USA

They have something similar in India as well where you get an in-car cradle, a car charger, OVI Maps loaded with about 6-7 of the recent handsets that have GPS built in, the cheapest been the 5230. No Paris trip though :(

This completely blows away Google's amateur offering in Google Maps Nav which requires a continuous online connection, continuous high volume data download, limited rendering options, limited coverage, etc etc.

why would one buy a Symbian phone now that Nokia has admitted it will abandon the OS after the N8? I had my heart set on the N8, and now, it's the end of the road. Where to now?

They are not abandoning symbian. The N series will no longer have symbian, other handsets will have symbian^3 and symbian^4.

Lol.. reading comprehension.. a rapidly vanishing resource..

why would they abandon it after spending s much money on buying it , making it open source and updating it to s3 and then s4 , cmon mate get a grip and dont believe all the internet trash talk you read

n series device may not be supporting symbian and will be reserved for meego which probably means bigger devices , bigger cpu , bigger screens , bigger ram , bigger qwerty aka simmilar to the n900

eseries and xseries devices will still support symbian and so what if you have a xseries device as long as it had something like the n8 spec would you care that it was called a xseries and not nseries i know i wouldnt and id still be happy to use any symbian handset as long as the firmware was stable , the handset built good and the spec of the handset suitbale for my needs and slighlty future proof for the next 6months-12months at least

back on topic this is a great push from nokia and they should do more of this across the globe , free sat nav with pre loaded maps is huge to me , no more paying tomtom 50 odd quid a map or more for a 2 week holiday

it really does hammer google maps in the fact you dont have to be online so much , google maps on android is really good but the online things would make using it on holiday (roaming) very very exspensive , i much prefer nokias efforts

nokia mpas has come along way too , i remember the n95 on v10 with maps it was ahem not very good to say the least

i now dont bother with garmin and the 2gb europe option i just load nokia maps and add countrys as i need them , hats of to nokia for this , it can be improoved but even at the minute its a great piece of software

cmon nokia let more people know that their tomtom can be replaced by their phone , specially a touch screen with 3.5" screen :-)

for me its all about convergance and nokia seem to do it best for my needs specially via symbian , great cameras and video recording , free sat nav , good batterys , good smrtphone o/s with nice selction of apps and games , dnla , hdmi , fm transmitter ,tv out , 3.5mm , compass , mp3/mp4etc etc , gallery , sharing , office , communication , mass memory and sd cards , infa red ports , qwertys and more the handsets they make are swiss army knifes and free sat nav is the icing on the cake for me :-)

"why would one buy a Symbian phone now that Nokia has admitted it will abandon the OS after the N8? I had my heart set on the N8, and now, it's the end of the road. Where to now?"

Ok, let's all repeat:

NOKIA IS _NOT_ ABANDONING SYMBIAN!
ONLY THE N-SERIES WILL BECOME MEEGO!
NOKIA WILL STILL USE SYMBIAN FOR ALL THEIR OTHER SMARTPHONE SERIES - X, E and C!
DEVELOPERS WRITING APPS FOR MEEGO USE QT
QT RUNS ON _BOTH_ SYMBIAN AND MEEGA; SO ABANDONMENT OF SOFTWARE WILL TAKE PLACE!

Ok? Is that clear enough?

Hahem....sorry it is of course:

QT RUNS ON _BOTH_ SYMBIAN AND MEEGO; SO ABANDONMENT OF SOFTWARE WILL _NOT_ - I repeat - WILL _NOT_ TAKE PLACE!

Ok...then.

Actually there's a very practical reason why you would buy this phoen now. It works *now* and does the job you need it to do *now*.

Even if Nokia ussport or not support a newer OS in a newer hardware, this phone will still work - heck my Nokia 9000 communicator still holds up well for terminal access, email and faxing. But Nokia haven;t ported GeOS to the N95...

Just sayin'

The turn by turn navigation is the star quality of these Nokia phones. I am gonna buy one for myself as I often prefer to adopt different routes to escape traffic and jams on the road in order to reach the office on time.
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