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Google Maps - offline for Android
alanwarwic
Posts: 28,396 Forum Member
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It is worth noting that the new Google maps allows you to select and save up to 6 areas for off-line use.
http://www.google.co.uk/mobile/maps/This is in addition to GPS navigation off-line caching of directions.
With maps IOS playing catch up is understandably deemed more newsworthy.
http://www.google.co.uk/mobile/maps/This is in addition to GPS navigation off-line caching of directions.
With maps IOS playing catch up is understandably deemed more newsworthy.
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Thanks.
Likewise Google Earth city flyover on mobile has rolled out (for a limited number of cities).
Reports that the offline bit doesn't work in all countries yet... but all good!
city size I think. somewhere there's examples of the London or Paris metropolitan area....
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/google-maps-for-android-offline-mode-out-now-50008425/
In the labs version, cached areas were automatically deleted after 30 days. Time will tell if that remains so in the release version.
In the beta version I don't think. Of course it used to expire after 30 days so you would need to periodically refresh the maps anyway.
The areas I cached where more like 5 mile radius at best. I drive 14 miles to work and I needed 3 cached areas to cover that.
Is it not like asking why Microsoft Office is not free.
The 'tunnel cache' of a full driving route is a sop to full priced apps too. However these all use data.
From experience it is extremely easy to fill up a 32GB SD card with different map data so that missing SD slot is a big downer.
No that's completely different... MS would lose millions of pounds if office were free.
I don't see how google would be affected at all as it would just mean it works where you dont have an internet signal.
Google loses too, only less in that they do not force the 30% tax.
So you think the reason Google doesn't do this is for there cut on selling TomTom via their store?
In that case why provide any features in the OS at all, make people have to pay for everything extra via the store.
As Apple have said when you take in the cost of the server farms, bandwidth, employees (credit card companies who take 16% leaving Apple with 14%) and so forth they actually make very little money from the app store. I'm sure google will be in a simular position.
Its more of a marketing tool to help sell hardware than it is a money making machine.
For penny apps, obviously the future here is $10 credits.
The cheapest paid for app in the app store is 69p
I was meaning in average evidently - http://www.iphonealley.com/news/how-much-does-apple-actually-make-from-the-app-store
Apple was doing much of this quite nicely until Google came along.
6 areas the size of greater London would be plenty for most needs. More than that presumably runs the risk of filling up someone's phone storage
Surely if someone has the space to spare there is no harm in downloading the entire UK just in case you happen to need it like you have with a stand alone Sat Nav.
Also I often use maps when traveling to another part of the country which in this case would be way more than 6.
I think it's a stepping stone personally.
When the feature was first introduced via Labs, it was 10km by 10km I believe, this is a big step up from that and I would expect, in the long run, that Google will put together downloadable country-based Map bundles.
But, given the way Google Maps has worked up until now, I suspect such bundles are not yet available.
That and it may be a way of mitigating the server load.
The announcement that this feature is available will have seen a lot of people (myself included) rushing off to try it out - if we were all downloading an entire country or two at a time, that would add up to a huge amount of strain on even Google's infrastructure.
nav can work offline already. I think there was talk about downloading the map for a pre-planned journey and caching that as well. Diversions still need a data connection though I think.
news to me, I must have wasted so much of my pricey data
On Nokia Drive, the maps for entire USA down to street level is still less than 2GB. Maybe if you mapped the entire world you would get close to filling a 32GB.
I don't think it uses much anyway, other than checking traffic and updating ETA. But yeah, my phone battery was low so I stuck it in flight mode and it still voice nav'd me fine.