Nokia's N95

Adding promise to the future of location-based online services, Nokia has launched a service that cuts the time a GPS-based mobile phone takes to pinpoint its geographical position.

ZDNet reports that the service, available for owners of its N95 smartphone, will cut start-up time from three minutes to one minute in most countries. GPS' current location orientation speed has dampened interest mobile-based navigation.

Most assisted-GPS technologies utilize mobile carrier cell sites to locate units faster, but Nokia's just-launched service bypasses operator networks entirely. Instead, data from a SIM card and a new softwarehelps the phone catch satellite signals.

The GPS chips in car navigation systems use satellites to determine a person's position.

Berg Insight forecasts that annual shipments of handset-based personal navigation devices in the US and Europe will reach 12 million units in 2009, up from 1 million in 2005.

Nokia's N95 currently retails for $965, or 700 euro, making it among the less accessible smartphones on the mobile market. In time, however, Nokia will stock all its GPS-ready devices with the new service.