News - Google Maps Navigation brings free GPS navigation to Android 2.0 handsets

[autopilot]

It will pre-cache the entire route before you set off to help with signal black spots, so you only need a connection for the initial routing planning stage. I'm not sure why people are that worried about live map downloading though, GPRS should be fine, even on the move. Basic map data is not huge and can be well compressed. I have done this with Nokia Maps a fair bit and it was fine. Pre-caching satellite and street view images is not realistic anyway, it would take huge amount of storage. But i agree, having the maps pre-loaded does give you an extra piece of mind.

Google maps uses Tele atlas mapping (owned by TomTom) AND NavTeq (owned by Nokia) so it will be interesting to see how well that works out if they use both for this. I dont know of any other sav nav that uses both.

[cheesemp]

Having driven round with google maps running on my N96 I can say it will need caching however 90% of the time it was ok, even with satellite imagery mode on (even in GPRS).

[directhex]

Related: Orange Maps has been ported to Android, and is available for download from the orangeworld website for Hero and DEXT