Both Nokia and the wider community have been busy with a lot of updates, some of which we summarize here.

Firstly, Nokia has updated both the Nokia Maps application for your Symbian device, but also a new Nokia Map Loader. Symbian Guru has kindly worked out the direct download links, which are Nokia Maps and Map Loader, if you don’t want to go via the normal Nokia Maps flash webpages.

Symbian Guru also points out that Python for S60 has been updated too, and is now at v1.4.4.

In other Nokia news, Mobile Web Server has been updated to v1.4, and Nokia have also released the new v7 PC Suite, and the Nokia PC Music client is now at v1.5.

Finally, the plan for Nokia to buy Navteq has now been approved by the EU, so it will be interesting to see what impact this has as the companies merge together.

Here’s something we strongly approve of… It’s a SatNav unit designed for HGV drivers, but priced at a similar level to other SatNav units. As a driver, you enter the height, weight, length, and any other potential factors, and the SatNav will choose HGV-friendly routes which will avoid roads / bridges / corners / weight limits that the vehicle cannot navigate. It can even avoid roads with cross winds or steep hills. The device uses NAVTEQ Transport data which includes all this additional data to help the unit. It’s also got hazardous goods information, information on loading bays and HGV fuel stations.

With a few button presses, the unit can have the HGV restrictions removed, so can be used in normal vehicles too, but anything that helps to avoid HGV drivers blindly follow their SatNavs and ending up on the front page of the BBC website or a national newspaper has to be a good thing.

There’s no support for receiving traffic data, although the unit does support a safety camera subscription, which is free for the first 6 months.

Maplin seem to have picked up, and the ProNav should be available from their stores in the near future. We expect other Navteq SatNav manufacturers to look at this unit and work out whether there’s a market, so we may well find other units offering this amount of customisation in the next year or so.

More information at Pocket GPS World.

A few weeks back the European Commission announced it was not 100% happy with the merger between TomTom and TeleAtlas, and now has raised similar anti-trust concerns over the merger between Nokia and Navteq. Both companies are responded to questions from the EC, but at this stage it’s not clear whether either deal with succeed.

Further to our previous article, at the end of last week, Garmin withdraw it’s bid for TeleAtlas, although not until TomTom had increased their offer ($4.2m) above that of Garmin’s ($3.3m). Garmin, a long time Navteq user, announced at the same time that irrespective of Nokia buying Navteq, Garmin have guaranteed access to Navteq data until 2015.

The TomTom deal is set to be signed today.

Earlier this year, TomTom announed it was going to make an offer for TeleAtlas. A few months later, Nokia announced it was actually making an offer for Navteq. This prompted TomTom to firm up it’s offer for TeleAtlas.

Today, Garmin has joined in and has also made an offer for TeleAtlas, which is an interesting move from Garmin, who have traditionally used Navteq maps worldwide.

There are other rumours flying around about companies wanting to buy TomTom, but nothing is confirmed yet.

Story from PocketGPSWorld.com