Nokia Adding "Own Voice" Feature For Turn-by-Turn Directions

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Who says Nokia doesn’t know how to innovate anymore? The Finish mobile giant is adding a new feature to their Ovi Maps application, which provides free turn-by-turn directions. Now, by using the “Own Voice” feature, you can record any voice and have that be the voice of your directions when navigating.

When setting up the “Own Voice” feature, it’ll ask you to repeat about 54 different phrases into the phone. Nokia says the whole thing will take about 7 minutes. Once all 54 are recorded, you’ll be able to use it as your turn-by-turn voice, or upload it to the internet for others to borrow your turn-by-turn directions. Then, you can browse all the uploaded ones. Ones already uploaded include voice from “The Grim Reaper” and “Battlestar Galactica’s Cylon Centurion”.

The feature looks to becoming for free to all Symbian smartphones that use Ovi Maps 3.03 or newer. This includes the Nokia N97, and a great number of other smartphones, and even some Nokia featurephones, but doesn’t include the great Nokia N900.

Obviously, the joke is here that men can have their wives record the phrases and then their wives can boss them around in the car. We can imagine a few mates recording the completely wrong phrases (“Turn Left” when it says “Turn Right” etc) so if you’re not looking at the screen, you get completely sent off course.

The “Own Voice” feature is a standalone app. It should be free in the Ovi Market under the full name “Own Voice For Ovi Maps”.