During Nokia World 2010 today Nokia opened up the veil on their newest version of Nokia Ovi Maps that is for touch screen smartphones packing the Symbian^1 operating system and the latest OS from Nokia Symbian^3.

According to an article over on Nokia Conversations, this latest version of Ovi Maps comes with a multitude on upgrades and feature improvements. Ovi Maps has thus far been downloaded over 20 million times and delivers free navigation to 78 countries.

So what does the new version of Nokia Ovi Maps deliver? Well there’s Ovi Maps Places which pulls together all of your favourite points of interest and the ability to access nearby places via positioning or improved search. Then Ovi Maps is hitting the social scene with users being able to “check-in” their location on several social networks such as Facebook, StudiVZ and RenRen.

Then there’s gesture control whereby Symbian^3 users will be able to pinch and zoom along with pan and swipe around maps. Real time traffic info is also new delivering safety alerts, traffic flow, in or out of navigation mode along with speed limit warnings and petrol stations and parking.

This new version of Nokia Ovi Maps will become available as a beta sometime later this month and is set for a release by the end of this year.