Nokia Drive Will Come to All Windows Phone 8 Devices — Even Those From HTC, Samsung

f you’re planning to purchase a new Windows Phone 8 device later this year, then one feature you may look forward to is Nokia Drive, Nokia’s popular turn-by-turn navigation service which is currently available in over 110 countries. The Finnish company has confirmed that Nokia Drive will be pre-installed on all Windows Phone 8 devices — even those manufactured by rivals HTC and Samsung.

In a post on its Conversations Blog, Nokia writes:

Nokia Drive is one of the major apps that on Nokia’s location platform. Today, we are also making this platform and its unrivalled quality of data and richness of features available on Windows Phone 8 for all partners. This means that Nokia’s Location platform will be central to the Windows Phone 8 experience, with the intention of developing smartphones that bring advanced location experiences.Windows Phone 8 partners and developers will be able to use our location assets to build location-based apps and experiences of superior quality.

If you already own a Nokia Lumia smartphone, you’re probably already familiar with Nokia Drive. But for those of you who know nothing about it, Nokia has provided a number of reasons why its location platform is “the biggest in the world”:

• We have maps data for more than 190 countries in more than 50 languages and navigation in more than 110 countries
• We collect information from Nokia Drive users and local authorities to provide traffic alerts in 26 countries, and also allow dynamic rerouting
• We have venue maps in over 5,000 shopping malls, train stations, airport, sports venues, etc. in 35 countries
• We support multi-modal routing: by car, on foot (including footpaths, shortcuts, etc. in over 400 cities) and by public transportation (over 100 cities)

So there’s another great feature you can look forward to in Windows Phone 8.