News - Google improves Maps and Docs for mobile

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Offline map downloads and document easier sharing is the order of the day.

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Read more.

Hmmm - good features, but more intrusive permissions. I didn't allow the upgrade.

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Originally Posted by Phage

Hmmm - good features, but more intrusive permissions. I didn't allow the upgrade.

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I thought you had the option to not share data with them??

Not that I could see on the permission page.

Is this Docs you're referring to?

The Maps feature is certainly welcome, I don't use Docs much. Currently downloading several tiles :D

By the way, it's actually 20kmx20km squares centred on the point you choose, rather than a 10mi radius ;)

Damnit, maximum cached areas is 10 :(

Damn wish they had this feature before I went on holiday to Europe. Would have saved an entire evening of manual map caching.

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Originally Posted by HEXUS

Maps now let users download the map data in a limited area, saving the need for a constant Internet connection when using Maps. The 'download map area' option is accessed from a Places page, and will pull map data in a 10-mile radius of the selected landmark.

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Ten miles is not a very big radius if you are planning for a road trip. Nokia maps lets you side load whole countries in one go, or if you can spare arround 5 Gb on your phone's memory card and your home broadband, you can download all their maps of the entire world in one go.

If I had an Android phone I would probably download maps in advance of a holiday, especaly if I expected poor phone reception. Last summer I took a borrowd Android phone with me to the Isle Of Wight, and tried to use the maps feature. It was a disaster as every time I tried to use the navigaion feature it would plan a route along the small lanes on the island and then loose reception when I tried to follow them.

With this, I would want to be able to download maps for the entire area I was likely to visit (The entire island, Hampshire, New Forest etc), not just a small area arround a landmark.

Actually you can already do that with Locations, which is part of Google Maps. The main difference is that it's meant to be a Sat Nav (which pretty much explains why I prefer to use Google Maps) - but I did find it handy in downloading the map for NZ when I visited recently. Unfortunately I also discovered that the GPS service there appears to be rubbish compared to here, so GPS wasn't much use, but it was handy to at least have some form of map even if not up to Google Maps' standard.

Incidentally, a friend of mine had Ovi maps and we discovered that Locations gave much better time estimates than Ovi, which was much more cautious :p

Try and use skobbler it ain't that bad and its for free on the android market