LONDON, England – The drapes were lifted from the latest version of Ovi Maps this morning, which is arriving for both Symbian^1 touchscreen devices and the new Symbian^3 family of devices. Boasting a raft of feature improvements and upgrades, this latest version of Ovi Maps will quickly make itself a must-have upgrade. There have been over 20 million downloads of Ovi Maps around the world so far, free walk and drive navigation is available for 78 countries across five continents and voice guidance is now available on 24 Nokia devices. Read on after the jump to find out what’s coming up in this new release.

Ovi Maps Places bring together all of your favourites and points of interest. You can now access nearby places using your position or through the new improved search, which offers suggestions, search history and spelling corrections as well as being location aware.

Ovi Maps is going social, too. Users will be able to “check-in” their current location on a variety of social networks including Facebook, RenRen and StudiVZ. With 7,500 3D landmarks available alongside millions of points of interest, this new feature is sure to be a hit. Users will also be able to share their current location via text message or email and send it to other users who have a browser-enabled device.

Gesture control will also be landing with this new release. Symbian^3 users will be able to pinch and spread to zoom and pan and swipe to move around maps on their touchscreen devices.

Road warriors will welcome the addition of real time traffic-flow information, safety alerts in or out of navigation mode and the addition of visibility for parking, petrol stations and speed limit warnings. Meanwhile, users of public transport will be pleased to hear that subways, trams and trains from over 85 cities around the world have been added showing network lines and stations and utilising the local colour signage for ease of use.

This latest version of Ovi Maps will be made available as a public Beta later this month (it’s set for final release before the end of the year) and will be available for Symbian^1 touchscreen devices devices and Symbian^3 touchscreen devices.

Let us know what you think in the comments below.