Unaware of what would be announced, I stayed up late for the Nokia virtual press event I was invited to check out. While it wasn’t some hot new Nokia handset as I had hoped, it was still pretty cool news.

I was greeted with a video from Anssi Vanjoki (Markets) who announced that Nokia will now provide their OVI maps for free… forever. How’s that for a nice bold statement. That’s a great thing for you Nokia users, but what about me? OVI Maps is a product for the desktop, too.

The picture above shows OVI Maps in it’s 3D view displaying the Eiffel Tour, which I thought was pretty cool, but there’s a lot more to the maps than some 3D tricks. At first glance, it seems they’ve really set out to compete with Bing and Google in the map and mobile navigation space. Now I just need another Nokia phone to play with so I can really give it a spin.

I’d love to hear opinions from any of you Nokia users.