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Nokia hopes the service, available now for users of its flagship N95 phone, will cut the start-up time to one minute, from up to three minutes currently. We highlighted our own frustration with the N95's GPS abilities in our video review of the N95.

"It will be reliably under one minute in most countries," Ralph Eric Kunz, head of Nokia's navigation and mapping operations told Reuters in an interview.

While most assisted-GPS technologies use mobile carriers' base stations to find locations faster, Nokia's new service bypasses operator networks, using data from the SIM card and new software that helps the phone to catch satellite signals.

Nokia's N95, costing around £425, won't

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tempt most phone buyers, but the Finnish firm aims to bring GPS chips to a wide array of its phones. All Nokia's GPS phones will have the new service, Kunz said.

Nokia bought into the navigation industry last year through its acquisition of German firm Gate5 and started to offer free maps and routing data in February 2007, while charging extra fees for navigation.

While a few years ago personal navigation device makers like TomTom shrugged off possible rivalry from the handset industry, they have now acknowledged the potential risk to their business.

TomTom has responded to the challenge by enabling users to update their own maps, rather then waiting for new versions to appear, and adding features such as an option to automatically direct a driver to the nearest hospital.

Current owners of the Nokia N95 can take advantage of this service by using the Nokia Software Updater. This will update the firmware on the device to the latest version.

Nokia N95 news, reviews, themes and downloads at Know Your Mobile