Android Apporama: GPS & Navigation
One of the many things that smartphones are good for is car navigation. Android comes with the Google Maps navigation system, but you may be interested in alternatives either because there may be something better out there (there is) or because you want to be able to use maps offline. So over the past several weeks, I’ve been using nearly every mapping option I could find, looking for the perfect free or near-free offline navigating option. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it. I did find some options that would work in a pinch. I looked at Accuracy (How up-to-date and comprehensive are the maps), Appearance (Does it look cool?), Addressing (How capable and convenient was it finding addresses), Estimations (How well it could guess how long it would take), Exploration (Can you use it to drive around without a destination in mind?) Offline Status (does it work offline), Retention (Did the program stay open and remember your route if you switched over to the music player and back), Features (what else it can do), and Voice (Whether it pauses your music while it’s talking, for example). Any grade not listed is a “C” which means that it was satisfactory but did not exceed expectations at all.
If you want to use the device a lot, I strongly recommend that you put down for one of the two premium options. Note that unlike most Android apps, you can only install either premium on one device per license.
Waze
Good: Accuracy (A), Appearance (B+), Addressing (A-), Estimations (A), Exploration (A), Retention (A), Features (A+), Voice (A)
Bad: Offline Status (F)
Summary: Except when I am either minding my data usage or testing alternatives, I almost exclusively use Waze. Not only does it get you from Point A to Point B, but it is remarkable at finding the best routes to do so and comes with some special features. It uses data from other drivers to monitor traffic speeds and give you the best estimates possible. Upon leaving my house and driving to Mark Thompson’s, a 230 miles trip, it estimated within five minutes how long the trip would take, and that’s despite uneven traffic, toll booths, and so on. It’s done this more than once. When there is unforeseen traffic, it will update your ETA accordingly and offer you alternative routes. When the turnabout was added, the map was updated within two weeks. It speaks clearly, pauses music while it’s talking, and pronounces the names of the streets that you’re supposed to turn on so that you don’t have to look at the device. In addition to all of this, there is a fuzz reporting system. People report cops looking for speeders and red light cameras, so you are often made aware when you are entering a speed trap. Waze virtually never has trouble finding an address (though it’s imperfect at directing you to the exact house on a street sometimes). There is, however, virtually no offline functionality.
Google Maps
Good: Accuracy (A), Appearance (B), Addressing (A+), Estimations (B+), Exploration (B), Retention (A), Features (A), Voice (A)
Bad: Offline Status (D)
Summary: Google tries really had to gear you towards Google Maps, so when you find an address on Google Maps or with Google Now, it makes it kind of difficult to use anything else. Which is mostly fine, because Google Maps will get you where you want to go. It’s by far the most integrated of the mapping programs. There is an offline option, but it’s very geographically limited, which is kind of self-defeating because you’re most going to want to use it when you are out of your own neighborhood. If you disconnect from being online, it will continue to work unless you go off-route.
A couple things that apply to all of the offline maps. Unless you upgrade maps (and you shouldn’t, because if you want to pay anything more than a nominal fee you should skip straight to “Premium” below) you will be using OpenStreetMaps, which is the Wikipedia of mapmaking. It’s not as bad as it sounds! It won’t drive you into a lake! The biggest issue where it comes into play is when you’re trying to find a specific address. A lot of them simply aren’t there, so you may have to improvise by finding a nearby intersection. Also, unless otherwise noted, you do have to be connected to the Internet in order to look up addresses or to simply enter an address, which is annoying if you have designs on using a device without Internet as an impromptu GPS system. However! You can still use these maps to save on your data plan if you have a light one. This can make it helpful to have one of these on your phone.
MapFactor Navigator
Good: Accuracy (B), Retention (A-), Features (C+)
Bad: Appearance (C-), Exploration (D+)
Summary: MapFactor is, compared to all other options, kind of ugly and bland in its interface (and you can only explore – sans navigation destination – in 2D). That’s not a bad problem to have, in the overall. Everything else is… adequate. If you’re trying to listen to music or an audiobook, the voice will try to speak over it. You can, however, turn the voice off (it’s not intuitive, you have to change Language from English to None). On the Retention front, it does loose the route sometimes if you keep it off the screen for too long, but it only happened rarely and it easily returns you on your route after you reopen. It translates and parses address from the Contacts list well and easily. Also, once you are at a place, if you want to save it under Favorites, it is easier with MapFactor than with any of the other apps, free or premium.
Note: MapFactor has the option to buy professional maps in addition to using OSM for free. I didn’t investigate this option and do not recommend it unless you need somewhere where you can install the maps on your SD card (the other premium options won’t let you do that).
Scout GPS Navigation & Maps
Good: Accuracy (B), Appearance (B) Exploration (B), Retention (B+)
Bad: Voice (I)
Summary: Note that this one, in the appstore, may be listed as Skobbler, which is the company that was purchased by Scout recently. This one is right up there with MapFactor. It looks nicer than MapFactor, though like MapFactor is won’t let you do much of anything as far as setting routes if you are not connected to the Internet. I gave it an “I” on Voice because it is both better and worse than the rest in this category. It’s better in that it you can hear it clearly because it suppresses the volume of any music you might be listening to, but it’s worse in that you cannot turn the voice off without also turning the music off. I find that the latter outweighs the former and that reason alone pushes MapFactor to #1, but if you want to listen to music from your car radio, then it’s a draw. For my own part, if Scout fixes this, it will be my go-to choice for free navigation software.
Note: Scout’s online-only option is free. To go offline, you do have to buy the app, which costs all of $2 and which you can install on multiple devices.
BE-ON-ROAD GPS Navigation
Good: Accuracy (B), Appearance (B), Exploration (B), Offline Status (B), Retention (B+)
Bad: Comprehensiveness (F), Features (D)
Summary: BOR cannot import anything from contacts at all, despite ostensibly having that functionality. But! On the off-chance that the address you are looking for is in the system, this is the sole app of the group where you don’t need to be offline to do it (which is why it has a better “Offline Status” grade than the others). Like MapFactor and Navfree, its voice will try to talk over the audio, but you can turn off voice if you are so inclined. There is little in the way of features. If something is out of date, it will go out of its way to annoy you until you update it. Other than that, it… has a really kick-ass logo?
Note: BOR will attempt to steer you towards purchased maps on a trial basis. Make sure you’re getting the free ones or the maps will stop working after a week or so.
NavFree USA
Good: Accuracy (B), Appearance (A), Exploration (A), Offline Status (B)
Bad: Comprehensiveness (F), Retention (F)
Summary: The second that NavFree first loaded up, I wanted to love it. The visuals are gorgeous. Better than all of the competition by a mile, including the premium options. Somebody should buy their graphics and then put a real mapping program behind it. Because as much as I wanted to love it, NavFree’s retention is beyond bad. I stopped using it because it seemed like every time I swiped it to move the music to the next song or pause the audiobook or anything it would forget what I was doing and where I was going and I would have to start from scratch, which I am not willing to do in a moving vehicle. Especially since trying to insert an address into the device is a pain and a half. It cannot parse even the most obvious of addresses from the Contacts list. If I had 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on my contact list (which I do, either for the sake of these tests or because Obama and I are buds, you pick), it would shrug in confusion if I tried to draw that from contacts, but if I insert it manually it can find it then. I really, really hope somebody buys the graphics from NavFree and puts it to good use. Until then, it’s only useful for very aesthetically pleasing exploration.
Note: NavFree has a purchased-maps option. It is not recommended. Also, if you wish to download this, make sure to download NavFree USA if you are in the United States. If you’re anywhere else, download the other version.
OsmAnd Maps:
Do not get this app. Do not waste precious storage space on this app. And under no circumstances should you try to use this app if you actually intend to go anywhere.
Note: You can buy a premium version, which includes more than a handful of states, for $8.
CoPilot
Good: Accuracy (B+), Appearance (B-), Addressing (B+), Offline (A), Retention (B), Features (A)
Bad: Estimation (C-), Exploration (D-) Voice (D)
Summary: Due to some early frustration with Sygic, CoPilot has been my go-to offline mapping program for some time. It’s very functional. You can do anything you want while offline, it has loads of options, looks okay, and can find most addresses. It simply gets the job done. It does have a few downsides, such as an inability to install the maps on an external SD card (Sygic has the same limitation) and poor exploration capability. It’s ETA’s, however, can be wildly off-base if you are driving down certain state highways (it’s good on Interstates). Also, if you have voice on but are listening to an audiobook, it will pause the audiobook and then won’t restart it when it’s done.
Note: CoPilot ($30)has a free option, which you can install on one device. However, it has limited capabilities and only works in 2D. I did not try this one.
Sygic
Good: Accuracy (B+), Appearance (A-), Addressing (B+), Exploration (A), Offline (A), Features (A), Voice (A)
Bad: Retention (C-)
Summary: Next to Navfree, Sygic is probably the nicest looking of the bunch. It is inferior to Copilot in the more important respects, but it does have that advantage. Retention isn’t perfect for Sygic, but if it closes in the background it does make it easy to bring up your route again. The maps are larger for Sygic than Copilot and cannot be installed on your SD card. I have the maps of nine states on there, and it takes up more space than Copilot which has all points east of Illinois and all the way to Texas in the South, and Sygic takes up more space. On the other hand, Copilot makes you download by region while Sygic lets you download individual states so if you’re not regularly traveling to other states you may be able to save space.
Note: Sygic has a free seven-day trial. It will annoy you with some pop-ups asking you if you want to purchase. It cost me $33 on sale.
Sort of apropos, sort of O/T (the life-and-limb hook brought it to mind): riding around the torn-up highways of suburban Twin Cities in the landscaping truck this week, a thought occurred to me (might have been related to MH17 as well & thinking about why public transportation, or at least air travel, is safer than individual driving): over the long term, any who stand in the way of the path to full automatization of driving are “killing people” in the Ezra Klein-James Hanley sense of the accusation.
It seems obvious to me that, though automatic systems are always prone to disasters, over time taking the massive input of human imperfection (with essentially no prior-restraint performance control at all – you can just get in a car and drive it; no one is going to make sure you’ve slept in the last 48 hours or you’re not drunk high off your ass unless you’ve had repeated f*ck-ups in the past), will be the surest path to a major reduction in our largest cause of accidental death and injury. Driverless cars shouldn’t be a curiosity and something to be overly cautious about. They should be seen as a major heath imperative for our country, especially given the transportation infrastructure/land planning approach we’re pretty much locked into.
America is a car country; people need to be allowed to have their cars. But let’s let the machines do the bulk of the driving as soon as is feasible.Report
@michael-drew Though I don’t like the “People who support Policy X kill” formulation (unless it’s something pretty direct) (not that you are advocating that formulation here), I think you are right about the importance of the enormous safety implications here.
It’s one of the reasons why I doubt those who say that trial lawyers will kill the robocar, or that regulators will or the cab lobby. Any and all of the above may delay deployment, but the gains are just too immense in the most fundamental of ways (lives, quality of life, money) to truly kill it.Report
Word. To the future!Report
it estimated within five minutes how long the trip would take, and that’s despite uneven traffic, toll booths, and so on.
“Dammit, I sandbagged by a half-hour, and now I’m going to get him there too soon. Let’s find a nice … Jack-knifed big rig! Perfect!”Report
2 questions: How well do these compare to a dedicated GPS. I have a 3-4 year old Garmin which has its eccentricities but has generally performed well. It even did well, with an added SD card, driving all around Ireland.
Do people actually use the voice mode? I’d rather drive blindfolded then listen to the voice prompts.Report
The Online maps are better, the Premium ones are about a draw (I’d say better, but I wouldn’t get them if you’re satisfied with what you have), and the Offline ones are worse.Report
I didn’t use voice mode much at all until we moved. It’s helpful when you’re in an unfamiliar area.Report
Definitely tangential, but something I’ve been wondering about for a long time and can’t seem to find anywhere, probably for proprietary reasons. Does anyone know how these routing algorithms work?
I use GPS extensively as you might imagine and I notice some oddities. Like, it won’t always give me the same route from point “A” to point “B”. So apparently the algorithm isn’t totally determinate.Report
There was a conversation about that here: https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2014/05/30/linky-friday-70-2Report
@road-scholar — To actually find a decent point-a-point-b path is pretty easy, mostly using some variation of the A* (read “A star”) algorithm (which you can Google up if you’re painfully curious). The difficulty then comes from dealing with the complexity of the road network plus dynamic conditions (road closures, traffic, etc.). To handle the complexity, it seems most of the systems are hierarchal. Local-ish searches look at local roads. Long distance searches include mostly major highways, with local stuff to deal with the endpoints. Plus I suspect they do a fair amount of pre-computation, by which I mean selecting a few likely routes between certain key points. Then if you are searching from (for example) near Boston to somewhere near NYC, it already basically knows the good paths between the cities and only needs to include the variations on each end. From that it maybe generates a few dozen likely paths and scores them, based on traffic and stuff, and shows you the best few.
Okay, so I’m guessing, but it’s probably something like this.
So, if you get a route at the start of a trip, and say it finds a few dozen. Then you start down one of those routes for a few hours. By that time if you search again, you still get a few dozen, but now chosen from different basis points, with a different spectrum of possibilities. Plus the road conditions have changed, so the scoring will be different. You can expect to see different routes.Report
I suspect that it uses either historical or real-time traffic data to determine the fastest route.Report
Waze does an amazing job with real-time-data, which is why I like it so much and why it is the first GPS my wife was sold on. Others had traffic subscription services (Copilot had a free trial), but I assume that they’re mostly working off speed limits, assumed speed limits, and maybe some purchased historical data.Report
@brandon-berg — Right. In fact obviously they have a great source of traffic information coming from the users themselves, since the GPS can tell how fast you are going. Just upload and aggregate. Easy peasy.Report
Will – regarding the offline Google Maps: They used to have an option where you could select a chunk of any given map and save it for offline use. As long as you can get a GPS lock it should work just fine. They put the option in there for people that want to use theirs while hiking or knew in advance they would be in a remote area.Report