Nokia are taking GPS capabilities seriously and have GPS enabled mobile phones such as the N95 and Nokia 6110. However, it is not as widely known that they have the Nokia 330, a dedicated car or personal navigation system (no phone capabilities). It’s a device loyal Nokia customers will be able to use in making use of the considerable investments Nokia is making in mapping and GPS location based services.

The Nokia 330 is a comparatively small and light (205 g) compared to other automotive GPS navigation devices. It’s turn by turn directions are driven by a Route 66 Navigate 7 software application with maps by NAVTEQ. As somewhat of a surprise to many the underlying operating system is Windows supplied by Microsoft.

Multimedia capabilities have been provided with the unit being able to play audio (MP3 and WMA) and video files (MPEG4, WMV, ASF, MPG and AVI) and display images (BMP and JPEG). The Nokia 330 comes with a mini-USB cable for connecting to a PC to load media files. An SD card can also be used.

This is Nokia’s first attempt at a dedicated GPS device however, they do have the experience of their GPS enabled phones.

A few possible detractions purchasers should be aware of are

• the in-car 12/24V DC charger is the only way to charge the unit. There is no AC charger available and you can’t charge the unit via the USB cable.
• there is no hands-free phone feature - surprising from Nokia!
• you cannot play music while using the unit for navigation.

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Specification for Nokia 300

• Turn-by-turn, spoken directions
• photo viewer
• video player
• 3.5” TFT, QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) , 65,536 colors touchscreen
• S3C2440 Samsung processor - 400 Mhz
• Route 66 Navigate 7 navigation system, Navteq map data, Europe-wide map information
• Windows CE operating system
• 64 Mb RAM Memory
• SD/MMC expansion slot
• 12V in-car charger
• 81 x 109 x 30 mm (H x W x D)
• 205 g