Tuesday 4 January 2011

Google Maps Navigation with roaming

A short post regarding my experiences with the new google maps navigation client and offline maps.
I took the opportunity to test the praised feature of google to be able to navigate offline with the new google maps client during my latest short trip to the netherlands using my Nexus One

First try: Route to the destination from Germany (home network). I switched data roaming off and entered the destinatation. As expected everything works fine. A few kilometers behind the boarder, mobile lost data connectivity and it still had > 200 KM to go. To my suprise, routing was done perfectly to the end, sometimes map-tiles have been missing, but the routing worked well.

Second (harder) try: Route without data network back to Germany. It turned out that the client needs a data connection to generate the initial route, so I switched Data Roaming on, calculated the route, switched it off again. Again the client was able to route me back without any hickups.

Overall: Pretty good job google!