Nokia has announced that its update for Nokia Maps has left beta stage and is now ready for consumers to download.

Downloaded over 240,000 times since announced in February, Nokia says Maps 2.0 has improved its optional car navigation, enhanced its pedestrian navigation, added multimedia city guides, now offers satellite images, and is sporting a redesigned user interface.

Highlights for drivers include improved optional car navigation that claims to equal PND-level car navigation experience with faster routing while updated user interface features include a new navigation carousel with pre-defined navigation views, i.e., navigation, arrow, bird-eye.

The optional pedestrian navigation "efficiently" walks you from A to B with visual guidance. It helps you to locate yourself by giving information about the surrounding buildings, streets and parks and, if the device supports it, notifies the direction you are walking.

Nokia Maps 2.0 includes public transportation information (station entrances) data in 17 cities with localised icons for stops and advanced multi-sensor positioning using AGPS.

Satellite images with hybrid rendering overlays for selected cities worldwide provide real aerial views are now available on your mobile as are new multimedia city guides including features photos, video, audio streams.

Using mapping info provided by Navteq and TeleAtlas, Nokia Maps now has maps covering over 200 countries, with over 70 of them navigable. Maps can be downloaded over the air directly to selected devices or by using the Nokia Map Loader on a PC.

Nokia Maps 2.0 and the current commercial version of the Nokia Maps Loader is available now for selected devices.

>> Link - Nokia Maps