[Q] Reccs for Offline Maps - General Topics

Will be traveling soon to SE Asia and elsewhere. Seeing that my device is wifi only, I'd like recommendations for map apps. What's important is that the app has a wide array of maps (ie good maps for many, many countries) available for download, and has detailed, accurate offline maps. A intuitive UI would also be nice. Whether or not the maps are "pretty" isn't a concern
atm, I'm using locus free and osmand. Wouldn't mind updating Locus, given that it's on sale atm, but would like to make sure that I won't end up essentially having to download another app immediately.

Related

are these applications available on Windows Mobile?

Looking at switching from an IPhone to a Winmo device (Touch Pro 2 to be specific) but need to know if some of the applications i use everyday are available. and at what price (if not free)
Shazam:Music Identification. real simple.
Pandora:found a few Cabs around, but no mention of compatibility with WVGA screens.
Urban Spoon: basically a program that uses your current GPS position to locate nearby restaurants.
Fandango/I.TV: shows local theaters, play times. allows purchase of tickets through the program.
Units: quick and easy unit converter.
now, are all these available with a nice finger friendly interface?
thank's for taking your time to help me figure out what all is available.
crazy talk said:
Looking at switching from an IPhone to a Winmo device (Touch Pro 2 to be specific) but need to know if some of the applications i use everyday are available. and at what price (if not free)
Shazam:Music Identification. real simple.
Pandora:found a few Cabs around, but no mention of compatibility with WVGA screens.
Urban Spoon: basically a program that uses your current GPS position to locate nearby restaurants.
Fandango/I.TV: shows local theaters, play times. allows purchase of tickets through the program.
Units: quick and easy unit converter.
now, are all these available with a nice finger friendly interface?
thank's for taking your time to help me figure out what all is available.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my experience with WinMO, simple apps that do only one thing are rare. The iPhone developers are more on that path. With WinMo, you are more likely to find full featured apps. For instance, instead of having an app that will just find the info for a song, you will more likely find a music player with that ability. I think Pocket Music Player (?) can do that. Think more like what kind of apps are out there for windows, you tend to get clones of those for the mobile platform. That is good and bad. For a power user, it is good.
I do know that a good unit converter exists. I for get the name. For a good list of apps, lookup the 2008/2009 smartphone magazine winners and runner-ups for WinMo apps (search google for "best pps apps") and you will find it. It lists a lot of good apps. Also, look up "ppc freeware" for some other good sites.
Shazam exists, do a Google for MusicID, i have a feeling it is only available preinstalled by the carrier but i may well be wrong.
Don't know about the rest.
2- if it is not compatible the graphical layout will be smaller (but in most case it's all right)
3/4- Google maps or the Web do it
5- to many app on the web
D'rath
Yup...
As it's been said, Shazam, and Pandora already exist. I have Shazam MusicID running on my Kaiser on T-Mobile, and it works just fine.
For the other two, why not just use Windows Live (or Bing). Same things all in one app.
http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile/index.html
if you're in love with the iphone UI, then that's one thing. But I'll be real... damn if I understand why one would want to install multiple apps that do simple tasks, when you can have one that does multiple tasks.
To each his own, I s'pose.
Sean D. said:
As it's been said, Shazam, and Pandora already exist. I have Shazam MusicID running on my Kaiser on T-Mobile, and it works just fine.
For the other two, why not just use Windows Live (or Bing). Same things all in one app.
http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile/index.html
if you're in love with the iphone UI, then that's one thing. But I'll be real... damn if I understand why one would want to install multiple apps that do simple tasks, when you can have one that does multiple tasks.
To each his own, I s'pose.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the Shazam Application is free? i believe i had heard somewhere it was pay per use.
i believe you underestimate the capabilities of both the Movie application and the "where to eat" application i am asking about. unless Bing can make totally random suggestions about restaurants wherever you are by taking your current GPS location and looking around.
i feel like i will get Smited here for posting this, but this is what i am talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTTIpM4L12s
also has reviews, menu, etc. i understand you can find places to eat with a simple google search. but that doesnt work when you have no idea where to start.
with the movie application you have the ability to read reviews, watch trailers, find show times at each theater, location and buy tickets. also has a normal TV guide. but i do not use that often. or can you easily do all this through the internet browser or other means?
i fear i may sound like a "Fanboy" for the IPhone, but i really am tired of the phones lackluster hardware and generally slow performance, and the less then appealing battery life.
but i do like these applications VERY much. they may only do one thing, but they do them extremely well. that's why i want to know if they are available on this platform because i am very interested in getting a Touch Pro2 when they become available.
As is typical with iphone vs WM, the iphone apps are going to look prettier. But the same things do, or can exist on WM.
I got Music ID here in the development & hacking section, for free. And it works fine on my Kaiser.
I *think* you can get movie reviews on Bing... I THINK! But I know you can find them, and get info about them, and where they're playing.
But it can get you random restaraunts from around you based on your gps, or cell tower location. You can find "restaurant" by typing, or speaking it.
for movie showtimes at nearby theateres, you can lookinto "flix" or "cinemo." flix is for the uk, franc, germany and soon to be for italy and spain too. Cinemo is for the US and Canada. They don't let you buy tickets, but they provide useful info. Both are hosted on this site, so look for it in the development and hacking forum.
orlandojumpoff said:
for movie showtimes at nearby theateres, you can lookinto "flix" or "cinemo." flix is for the uk, franc, germany and soon to be for italy and spain too. Cinemo is for the US and Canada. They don't let you buy tickets, but they provide useful info. Both are hosted on this site, so look for it in the development and hacking forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the info!
finger friendly is rare in winmo as of now...
one more question, when using google maps, (or TomTom, etc) can the program pull address information from contacts?
say im in google maps can i just start typing "current location" in the "start" and have it figure out i mean where i am now? and for the "End" can i just start typing my contacts name and have it automatically enter my contacts address?
and when viewing a contact, can i just click their address and have it automatically pull up Google maps (or any other navigation application) and show me that location?
crazy talk said:
one more question, when using google maps, (or TomTom, etc) can the program pull address information from contacts?
say im in google maps can i just start typing "current location" in the "start" and have it figure out i mean where i am now? and for the "End" can i just start typing my contacts name and have it automatically enter my contacts address?
and when viewing a contact, can i just click their address and have it automatically pull up Google maps (or any other navigation application) and show me that location?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can do the former, though not quite as you describe. You click the menu, go to Options and choose "Look up Contact". It then lists your contacts that have address info and will pop up the map to them and give you several options.
The latter you can't do with the built in Windows contact manager, but their might be a 3rd party one that can interface with Google Maps, I don't know.
crazy talk said:
i believe you underestimate the capabilities of both the Movie application and the "where to eat" application i am asking about. unless Bing can make totally random suggestions about restaurants wherever you are by taking your current GPS location and looking around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you're underestimating the Bing app. It's not just a web search. The Bing mobile app uses GPS or cell towers to locate you, and then offers local search for restaurants, gas prices, theatre / showtime listings, local businesses. It also gives local weather and traffic reports, AND has a GPS mapping app to give you directions to anywhere you find. And it can even do location-based web searches, pulling up wikipedia articles or news items about places you're near. And the whole thing is built with a finger-friendly interface (although it's still rough around some edges). Heck, it's even got voice-command -- click the "speak" button, say "sushi," and it'll list the nearest sushi places.
Bing might not have every last feature of Urban Spoon or the showtimes app you're talking about, but it certainly has a lot of power of its own.
FloatingFatMan said:
You can do the former, though not quite as you describe. You click the menu, go to Options and choose "Look up Contact". It then lists your contacts that have address info and will pop up the map to them and give you several options.
The latter you can't do with the built in Windows contact manager, but their might be a 3rd party one that can interface with Google Maps, I don't know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am using the standard contacts app and have options for locating in Google maps, Bing (formerly live search), and Garmin XT. Garmin has a sub menu with locate and route to.
If you are running Google maps and you don't have 'locate in Google maps' in the menu for contacts let me know. I would like to find out what put it there.
By the way, as floatingfatman said, you can look up conacts in your mapping app. I can do this in Google maps, Bing, Garmin XT and Destinator.
Midomi is alot easier on the eyes than Musicid. As far as UrbanSpoon I wish there was an app for Winmo, but Bing is the next best thing. With emulators and all is there anyway to get it working on Winmo devices?
I have the touchpro2
midomi is a seems to be a really good app and it's free. it gives you the option to listen to a sample of the song, search youtube or buy the song. you could also hum or sing the song to start the search.
This is much more finger friendly than past versions of winmo. I'm sure it's still not up there with the iphone as far as that goes but it's getting a lot closer.

Maps app for hiking trails?

What's the best app for finding and navigating hiking trails?
Sent from my DROIDX using XDA App
Search the market for everytrail. A lot of trails posted but of course could always depend on your area. Its pretty nice because it can just pull your location and show the nearest hikes to you.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
You might also look into mapping programs that will let you load arbitrary maps into the phone, such as scanned trail maps or topo maps. None of the options are particularly quick to set up, as you'll have to get maps into them.
If OSM has good enough maps, you could use something that'll cache offline maps of it. Often there are decent trail maps there, although I honestly don't see how people have the time to create them given the tools OSM gives.... Anywho.
Backcountry Navigator, Maverick and Orux are a few I found googling.
BackCountry Navigator is damn nice, I've been playing with it all day.. You can pre-cache maps from a bunch of different sources and it has a specific offline mode to use the maps later, all very easy to do. I have a question out to them about calibrating and importing a custom map, something that I'm not seeing in the program but maybe I'm overlooking it.. Like there's an area where I mountain bike and the topo maps are REALLY hard to read the trails as they seem to blend right in with the contour lines, but I have several great high level trail maps that I'd love to be able to use.
OruxMaps is the most useful up to date. The essential feature is offline navigation, i.e. maps can be seen when there is no cell tower in sight. It is essential in the mountains (too high) in the forest (too far) and in high sea. Additionally one can switch the cell receiver completely off that gives more juice to GPS and actual navigation without recharge.
The tracks can be uploaded to pop track sites including google maps. The only deficiencies I know of: UI requires some learning, stats charts can't be exported (particularly important for high profiles)

GPS app - Offline maps and offroad navigation

On my Windows CE PND, I use oziexplorer.
Using Mobile atlas creator I can use Google or OSM maps, and at the same time it has features like "as the crow flies navigation" to a waypoint, or load upto 5gpx tracks and show on screen, and navigate by gpx track.
It also writes tracks, with a new track for every day(useful over multi day trips).
I was looking at similar android apps.
I came across the following
1. Locus
This is the most popular, but gpx writing etc., has just been added, and is basic
2. Trekbuddy - Very old app, I am not sure if any current dev is going on
3. Big Planet tracks - Looks very promising, and feature set advertises "waypoint navigation etc,m'
4. Oruxmaps - Again very popular, can load gpx track
All the above maps do not split tracks by day.
I also found some quirks. For example in oruxmaps, there is no way of telling whether its writing a track or not. the button does not change shape on pressing play pause etc.,
All the above are great apps, but from an offroad navigation standpoint, I am not aware which is the best.
Of course there are paid apps like Maverick etc., but currently I am looking only at free apps.
Oziexplorer for android is under alpha stage, and many features are missing, but since I have already purchased a license long time back, I presume, I should be able to use it once it comes(nobody knows when), if the licensing terms are same.
What do you guys suggest? Any offroad navigators here?
any other apps which I may have missed?
thank u very much
Have you tried Brut Maps?
Brut maps are good for offline mapping. For this purpose orux/locus etc., all are excellent solutions. I am looking for a good off road gpx and navigation system. similar to oziexplorer. All the apps I mentioned are somewhat capable of what I need, but not every feature is available.
I think the Big Planet tracks is the most promising, since source is open, and with more developers joining in, things can get better!
I'm on the same hunt, a good off road gps navigator. I go off road a lot (have jeep, will travel) and the trails i go on do not exist on conventional maps. they are on topo maps as dotted lines or "jeep trails". I used to use GPS Tuner when i was on windows mobile. Loved that program. best thing out there in terms of off road navigation. hopefully they'll port it to android soon.
I'm currently trying Maverick, OruxMap, and Gaia GPS to see how they compare.
Maverick seems to be the best so far. Easy to learn and use. And has a lot of map options. Plus with the newest version they finally allow custom mapping, which means you can use a program like MapMaker to create a downloaded map with your choice of a source. I also like its interface and how it responds. Also love the one click ablity to drop a waypoint.
OruxMap seems like a good program, but it gets on my nerves a bit when you can not search around on the map, by dragging it, without it doing that "distance to target" crap. My other complaint about it is that it seems you can't just load a bunch of waypoints in without a track. wtf? hopefully i'm just missing something, but so far i can not load my already existing kml file (and yes, tried as gpx as well) full of waypoint markers without a track in progress or from the past. I do not like that. When I go off roading, i would like to load the markers, and have it track where i go. mainly because my "markers" are more like virtual notes to me on forks in the trail and what each one does. plus some of my markers are POI along the trail, like a nice rock climb or deep mud bogg, and I'd like to be able to just click that and have it point me in the direction of it without having to already be on my way.
Gaia GPS is nice and simple. nothing really fancy about it, except the price you pay for such a simple app. It is great if you want access to the old topo maps that it seems no other gps program can get without importing them via MapMaker. Its very easy to use, simple to follow and does its main job perfectly. show where you are ontop of topo maps. this is good for someone like me that wants to see where the old jeep trails are because like i said earlier, seems no mapping company marks these anymore.
And I've tried testing these all as best as i can. Right now I'm grounded to roads only due to the fact my off road ability is shot due to a bad transfer case. but hopefully i'll be able to do a true middle of no where, no cell service, off road test off these apps and any others i can remember to install before leaving the network.
But right now, if i had to pay for one, it'd be Maverick.
I am finding androzic quite nice too. Currently trying orux and androzic, will finalize about one of them
tsk1979 said:
I am finding androzic quite nice too. Currently trying orux and androzic, will finalize about one of them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I on a similar hunt - how did u get on?
Androzic is the way to go!
Oruxmap is almost there, but Androzic is totally Oziexplorer like. And guess what, Oziexplorer truly rocks.
I think orux maps would be close if it auto saved waypoints you created manually, and did not have so much confusing screen clutter.
I love androzic for the "look ahead feature", where I can look ahead a set percentage towards the direction I am travelling.
If you do try androzic, do not forget to download img2ozf from the project page(version 2) as newer version of img2ozf from oziexplorer website will create ozfx3 format maps from mobile atlas downloaded maps, which is not supported by androzic.
Awesome!
Thank you!!
I too have GPS units that I get in for myself & friends and we all go 4x4ing deep in the aussie bush.
Since the tablets have come along way I have been thinking about trying one with off-roading to compare to our current GPS units. However, if I can get a good tablet with GPS, and GPS software that I can port my 6gig worth of oziexplorer maps... I am set!!
I am going to look in to Androzic asap - currently I have masses of CD's with rooftops maps & that is the main thing I want on the droid tablets!
Thanks again for this thread!!
Guys, no question...
I mean it seriously. Menion (the dev of Locus) spends several hours a day in making Locus the best offline map app ever. If you have some suggestions or missing features, why don't you put it on his wishlist?
I looked at locus, but as things currently stand, oruxmaps has kind of come out on top for me.
It can write tracks, read tracks, navigate as a crow flies to a waypoint, or navigate a track.
Now I need to ask the devs to work on the trip computers.
For example, multiple odometers, with individual reset etc.,

{APP} NDrive - Best GPS App Ever

ITS FREE FOR Iranians ONLY. You Must Pay If You in another Country.
Today more than one million users use NDrive in their daily commute.
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For ScreenShots And etc ... Go To:
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I think you've never used Sygic .
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium
NDrive maybe good but it is also expensive - I would have to fork out 100€ to get all the maps that I normally use.
sormou said:
I think you've never used Sygic .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go and Search For Comparisons of NDrive and Sygic. You Can Find Interesting Results about What Could Be The Best
Titus A Duxass said:
NDrive maybe good but it is also expensive - I would have to fork out 100€ to get all the maps that I normally use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I Used The Attached File and So Far, Its ALL Free.
I Download Iran's Map, Farsi Voice Service & Speed Trap Add-on For Free. And Its Working Fine Without Asking For a Buck.
bdodge1989 said:
I Used The Attached File and So Far, Its ALL Free.
I Download Iran's Map, Farsi Voice Service & Speed Trap Add-on For Free. And Its Working Fine Without Asking For a Buck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How its free mister?Its cracked?If its cracked i think its illegal to post it here...:/
Warez I fear.
When will people start reading the rules?
its not warez, its just free for middle east. you can download it from samsung apps.
If that is the case I suggest you edit your OP to save people not in the Middle East messing around with it.
By the way, it isn't usable across the Middle East. It just allows use of Iranian maps.
why everybody so crazy about this. You can install it and see if its free for you or not. if its free its ok. if not, just share ur damn comment.
bdodge1989 said:
why everybody so crazy about this. You can install it and see if its free for you or not. if its free its ok. if not, just share ur damn comment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mister i installed it to try it but i can ONLY download Iranian(?) maps!!!
So useless for everyone else!
eliashadow said:
Mister i installed it to try it but i can ONLY download Iranian(?) maps!!!
So useless for everyone else!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok So i edit the first post.
bdodge1989 said:
Its not just for iranian. i said im iranian and i have no problem using it. you can test it your self and share youre results with us.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
as i told you i test it and after installation i can see iranian only and iranian map only....
ill try to find it via samsung apps...
Hi,
I can't install ndrive on samsung-n9002 could you please help me about it
Thanks in advance

[Q] Downloading Large Google Maps Areas on Android

Google Maps will not allow me to download a large enough area to be useful. It's something like 10 miles across. In places like southern Oregon, your nearest neighbor may be more than 10 miles away, and cell towers are often nonexistent.
How can I download a larger map area under Android?
I'm currently frustrated because under iOS, xGPS allowed me to easily download any size area I wanted from Google Maps. I could even use my desktop to download and transfer the map to my phone via WiFi.
Is there any option to do this under Android? What about another mapping platform?
Note, I don't need offline routing or anything. Just a clear, high resolution map, preferably with terrain features, and a GPS dot for where I am.
blueandwhiteg3 said:
Google Maps will not allow me to download a large enough area to be useful. It's something like 10 miles across. In places like southern Oregon, your nearest neighbor may be more than 10 miles away, and cell towers are often nonexistent.
How can I download a larger map area under Android?
I'm currently frustrated because under iOS, xGPS allowed me to easily download any size area I wanted from Google Maps. I could even use my desktop to download and transfer the map to my phone via WiFi.
Is there any option to do this under Android? What about another mapping platform?
Note, I don't need offline routing or anything. Just a clear, high resolution map, preferably with terrain features, and a GPS dot for where I am.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check Maps With Me app
IF I HELPED YOU PRESS THE THANKS BYTTON
I've downloaded maps with me. It looks good for some things. Will be testing it out more on my weekend trip through southern Oregon.
Any thoughts on topo maps to go? That was another feature I really liked about xGPS but can't seem to replicate.
Google maps is pretty useless except for getting the most direct route
I Personaly Like Waze Social GPS Maps & Traffic or Scout GPS Navigation & Traffic

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