I’ve been using Waze for the past year but I just looked it up and realised that it’s also owned by Google. I tried using OsmAnd yesterday twice, but the first time I went through a tunnel it just stopped giving directions when I came out of the tunnel (a bug I assume). The second time on the way home, it took me down the wrong exit and I almost ended up at the airport!
Anybody have a better experience with other apps? I’ve just installed Organic Maps so I’ll see how that goes this week.
Sadly traffic is not available in lots of places :(
@JoelJ
You can also try MagicEarth from PlayStoreI use “HERE we go” in Germany
For most people Organic Maps is the move.
I love OSMand and it has become my digital pin board of places I’ve been to over the years. It can do a lot (for example I have a preset with sat imagery and a transparent topo map overlay for hiking) but it can be clunky, and a lot of cool stuff is hard to find and change in the menus.
This is perfect! Ty
I used MapFactor many times during trips.
You can either download free maps from OSM or paid maps from… I think it’s TomTom? Or is it Garmin? I forget, I’ve never used them.
Anyway the interface ain’t that friendly, but there’s a LOT of points of interests, and there’s live traffic if you have internet access. It has a few cool features too. It can be used via Android Auto and can even use your phone screen’s reflection on your windshield as a HUD!
The only caveat is you have to download the maps and they can take a lot of storage space depending how large an area you need.
Edit : yeah it’s TomTom
GPS (and cellular) doesn’t work in tunnels, and it takes a number of seconds for it to reconnect and get GPS coordinates again once you come out of the tunnel.
This is true for all GPS apps and services.
The commercial options guess where you are in the tunnel based on crowdsource speed outside of the tunnel in both directions. When you come out of the tunnel you don’t have GPS service but they will continue to guess until they reconnect which is a rather nice feature.
I have had organic maps freak out coming out of a tunnel and just never reconnect.
That is true, but it did regain my GPS coordinates and continued to track my location, but the navigation instructions telling me where to turn etc. disappeared and never came back. Luckily I wasn’t alone in the car so they just took over navigation for me
And it still might take a minute or two for your cellular to reconnect to gather further directions.
Some apps just might be better about the cellular reconnect side than others, I haven’t tried them all.
Even then, it can take over a minute to reconnect to some cellular networks after a tunnel blackout, which may exceed the timeout of some mapping app data requests.
There isn’t really a reason for the app not to fake your journey through the tunnel. It knows you’re about to enter a tunnel, and it knows you will probably lose GPS signal. It should just show you driving through that tunnel until an estimated time you should exit, then if you don’t reconnect in time it should pause at that spot until you catch up.
I hear ya, but it would have to be done with at least some form of red safety indicator, like…
“NO CONNECTION, LOCATION ESTIMATED”
On a side note, why don’t Teslas obey the law that says not to stop in tunnels?
If I’m honest I’m actually wondering why none if those drivers were paying attention. Cars blow tyres or otherwise stop, it’s not limited to misbehaving teslas. The tesla wasn’t braking hard and suddenly, it just slowed down.
In my mind the drivers should have been paying more attention.
Sorry, I know we like to hate on teslas here. I still wouldn’t buy one (or be a passenger).
Another vote for Magic Earth, the other providers do not have addresses past street - level in my location. No complaints at all :)
Thanks, I’ll give that a try after Organic Maps. I had the same issue with no street numbers too
I usually use magic earth and i really like it. I’ve been trying organic maps because it was in the fdroid store but i’m not really a fan of the user interface. It’s only been a few days and i think i need to mess with it more to get used to it, but magic earth was great at finding places and navigating and the user interface was pretty intuitive.
i have been using magic earth with no issues.
Best I’ve seen so far is organic maps. It’s very good on local It shows you all the building numbers around you which is kind of nice. However it does not work well on long trips. And more than once I’ve had to download fairly large blocks of extra tiles if I’m not on an interstate.
To get you back and forth to a doctor or a dentist or a couple of towns over it’s fabulous.
I prefer organic maps to osmand but neither is great. My old Garmin car GPS was in some ways better. Google’s main competitor is unfortunately probably Apple Maps.
I guess buying a car GPS system is still an option 🤔
