Happy Face: Offline Google Maps Coming To Android Very Soon

 

This may make the makers of Co-Pilot and Navigon sit up and notice!

http://www.tmonews.com/2012/06/happy-face-offline-google-map...

While offline Google Maps has been available as a labs feature through the browser allowing cached maps for offline use for some time now, it’s coming soon as an official feature. No word yet on when the Google Maps app on Android will receive the update — however, you’ll be able to select what type of maps you want offline to help save space. Awesome.

This sounds like one good

This sounds like one good news. Will see what the next update on Google Maps has for my Toshiba Thrive tablet. Here is another link about it http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/06/google-maps-for-android-g...

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Charlie. Nuvi 265 WT and Nuvi 2597 LMT. MapFactor Navigator - Offline Maps & GPS.

It appears that TomTom is also about to release an Android app

Jim1348 wrote:

This may make the makers of Co-Pilot and Navigon sit up and notice!

http://www.tmonews.com/2012/06/happy-face-offline-google-map...

While offline Google Maps has been available as a labs feature through the browser allowing cached maps for offline use for some time now, it’s coming soon as an official feature. No word yet on when the Google Maps app on Android will receive the update — however, you’ll be able to select what type of maps you want offline to help save space. Awesome.

From what I have read, the current plans at Google are to be able to download and cache a certain number of the map "tiles" that you can currently use only one at a time. It sounds as if they are still not planning download and cache of enough map information for a long distance trip without additional download(s). Of course, press releases can often be poorly worded in terms of accuracy, so that apparent limitation may not be real.

However, there was another announcement this week that appears to warrant attention. The CTO of TomTom was quoted as saying that they are "close" to releasing an Android app. The best guess is that this may occur at the "Google IO" conference that is occurring in a couple of weeks, as those sort of events are a traditional time in many industries to announce new products.

No details were provided, but there are hints that TomTom's Android app will have a downloaded and cached map for all of North America. This is the way that their dedicated GPS units work, so it sounds reasonable.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

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XXL540, GO LIVE 1535, GO 620

*happy dance*

-et- wrote:
Jim1348 wrote:

This may make the makers of Co-Pilot and Navigon sit up and notice!

http://www.tmonews.com/2012/06/happy-face-offline-google-map...

While offline Google Maps has been available as a labs feature through the browser allowing cached maps for offline use for some time now, it’s coming soon as an official feature. No word yet on when the Google Maps app on Android will receive the update — however, you’ll be able to select what type of maps you want offline to help save space. Awesome.

From what I have read, the current plans at Google are to be able to download and cache a certain number of the map "tiles" that you can currently use only one at a time. It sounds as if they are still not planning download and cache of enough map information for a long distance trip without additional download(s). Of course, press releases can often be poorly worded in terms of accuracy, so that apparent limitation may not be real.

However, there was another announcement this week that appears to warrant attention. The CTO of TomTom was quoted as saying that they are "close" to releasing an Android app. The best guess is that this may occur at the "Google IO" conference that is occurring in a couple of weeks, as those sort of events are a traditional time in many industries to announce new products.

No details were provided, but there are hints that TomTom's Android app will have a downloaded and cached map for all of North America. This is the way that their dedicated GPS units work, so it sounds reasonable.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

I've heard the rumours of an official TomTom app myself, and if the rumours are true...this may be something I want to check out grin Especially if it allows use of OV2 files, this may be one of the better solutions out there for Android.

As for Google Maps, the announcements on Google's blog indicate that one will be able to save maps from over 100 countries, but no idea if it's large areas download or more of caching maps a la the present labs caching (http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/06/never-ending-ques...). We'll see when the update comes out, I guess grin

Happy Face: Offline Google Maps Coming To Android Very Soon

I would like to know when the agreement between Garmin and Asus expires. I recall that is probably what is keeping Garmin from offering a Garmin Street Pilot Onboard For Android.