I use NavFree.

It's great for holidays as global maps are available for free, so no data roaming charges. I also like the search integration with Google, even better than full post code for major POI.

I only wish it had traffic jam and speed camera warnings.

I'm actually getting used to Google navigation freebie - didn't know you could pre-load a journey by wifi before you set off to save 3g - dunno how you do this thou - maybe as easy as setting the journey whilst still on wifi but can it find a satalite whilst still indoors?

I would also prefer to display "time at arrival" (eg 14:55) as opposed to "time to arrival" (1hour 15 mins)

I don't think you can download maps for the whole route but you can get the maps of specific areas on your phone.

Go to Google maps. Browse to the area that you want to pre-load, click the setting button and choose "Make available offline". The map should then download. You can do this for multiple areas as long as you have enough storage space available.

I've been able to do routes before with no data signal as long as I enter them under wifi first. Has even re-routed if I've gone the wrong way.

I believe there is a 6 zone limit to the amount of caching you can do but one zone is big, for example the whole on london is classed as one zone.

Btw, I've measured the data usage for google maps and its pretty small, maybe tens of MB for a zone and kb for traffic updates which normally happen every couple of minutes.

I find that Navfree routing is terrible, where are google maps is spot on, taking the quickest route 99 times out of 100.

Yes it's quite big.

I CACHED virtually the whole of the South East of England (Anglia, Kent, London and also further West as well) with no problem.

Also it does not really use that much data if you don't (I drive a lot for my job and it's hardly anything data wise).

Paid for Co Pilot Live vote here, have used it with no issues on Nexus One, HTC Sensation, Galaxy Nexus and Xperia T.

I sold my tom tom some time ago as I find this a much improved service, the traffic warning is very accurate

I like Google Navigation on my Android.... sometimes. Other times I could strangle it!!

The main reason for my frustration is that:

i) if it tells you to take a left or right turn at a junction, it will say the turn is further away than it actually is, so I miss the turnoff, thinking it's the next one. Also, sometimes it has asked me to turn into roads that are not actually there.

ii) once I've missed a turn, it then starts "re-routing", and does not tell me to turn around, where turning around would be quicker. For example, I missed a turning last week when I was 5 mins from my destination. It re-routed and said I was 11 mins from my destination. Once I'd turned my car round to face the direction I'd come from, it went back to 5 mins from my destination again. My friend is using the same app on her Android phone, and hers does ask her to turn around. Mine never has.

If there is a way to fix the "re-routing" issue, then it would be a lot better.

Yes, I downloaded all of the area within the M25 as one zone. Very impressive being able to zoom around London without any data lag.

This is very handy if you are going abroad on holiday as you can download the area map and then use it there without using any data.

Another vote for CoPilot. V8 was OK but Live is much better.

And the zones are not that big a file, I think around 20mb per zone so even via 3G I don't think its an issue downloading them on the fly. I drove from south-east england to west scotland and downloaded data on the fly no problem and it didn't use much of my data allowance.

One thing with pre-cache is that it does not do POI so seaches still need a data connection. Good news is that it does mean the POI is always up to date and don't think there is any sat nav that somes even close to google's POI database, its basically the same as online search. The other day I was looking for a shop, I just spoke in the name of the shop and the town and directed me straight there.

It's a great shame that sat nav software is being written to assume that people have network connections (either wifi or 3G) because not everyone's tariff includes access to 3G. Hence the need for the ability to download everything once (while you are on a wifi connection) and then never to need a network connection while you are driving.

Nokia manage this perfectly with Ovi maps, and give lifetime access to updated maps (to be downloaded at home when you've got a fast and free connection), so I wonder why other software like Google Maps can't do it. If only Nokia would release a version of their software for Android, in addition to Windows and iPhone.

in general everything is heading towards cloud computing, from google maps, to google music to google office. Data plans are getting pretty cheap and tbh a necessity to use the full functionality of smart phones these days. And don't forgot some phones have limited memory and some newer phones (and iphones) don't have expandable storage.

As for Nokia, I assume they are being paid to keep their app unique to their platform.

I think I expanded each of my 6 zones to the max size and theywwere around 80gb each.

I must admit that it would be nice to CACHE the whole of the UK though for when I go out of the South East on holiday etc.

I hope you meant 80mb,

So that would be around 500mb of storage. I think tomtom map of the UK is around 150mb (including POI) so I am guessing that 500mb is either inefficient stored or has more detail then tomtom.

A slightly old thread, I know, but not that old, and the first one I found when researching the same issue...

After trying some of the suggestions mentioned earlier, I'm now trying out OsmAnd v1.1.0 (overseas, at the moment), and so far, I am very impressed. Offline maps, works well. I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts.

A.

I found with Google navigation I can set the route whilst still in my house using WiFi and it downloads the route and then starts searching for satellites which it find s when I'm in the car

it does use very little data because it seems to work perfectly even when I can't get a very good signal for anything else

with regarding it not recommending a 180 u-turn if you over shoot - on my old Sat nav it was an option/preference whether to recommend "a u-ee"

you dont actually need to be told this and some people prefer to go around