{"id":7872,"date":"2015-11-16T00:01:19","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T08:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=7872"},"modified":"2015-11-15T09:42:42","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T17:42:42","slug":"offline-maps-navigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=7872","title":{"rendered":"Offline Maps Navigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/maps_app.png\" alt=\"maps_app\" width=\"250\" height=\"265\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7873\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Google Maps app has long been able to save a portion of the map for offline viewing. But what good is that when navigation barely works? Now that issue has been resolved.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nLast week (November 11, 2015), Google released an update to the Maps app. The update provides no only full navigation for an offline map, but the ability to search nearby.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, you can navigate anywhere with your phone or tablet minus a mobile data or Wi-Fi signal, which covers about 60 percent of the planet. That&#8217;s quite impressive.<\/p>\n<p>So I tried it out.<\/p>\n<p>I used my Nexus 9, which is a Wi-Fi only tablet. I downloaded a chunk of map near my grocery store and took off in the Jeep.<\/p>\n<p>My garage is still in range of the office Wi-Fi, so I knew that navigation would start with a full Internet connection. As I drove, I fully expected Trudy (the name I give the online navigation voice) to steer me about 50 feet from my house and then shut up. But no, she kept blabbing as I made my way.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, the first thing I did was to deviate way off the course. Navigation stopped. With a mobile data connection, the path would have been updated and I&#8217;d receive new directions. Not so with the offline map. While the Maps app did accurately chart my location (on the offline map), navigation wasn&#8217;t updated. So I returned to the route.<\/p>\n<p>While driving, you do have the choice of taking an alternate route, but only one that&#8217;s preset on the screen.<\/p>\n<p>In Figure 1, you see a screenshot where I waited at a traffic signal. Trudy wanted me to go straight, but that leads to an awkward intersection, so I turned left (on the gray line). Immediately, the directions changed to reflect my chosen route &mdash; no Internet connection necessary.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7883\" style=\"width: 460px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7883\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/navigation_1114-fig1.png\" alt=\"Figure 1. Navigating on the Nexus 9 tablet minus an Internet connection.\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7883\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/navigation_1114-fig1.png 450w, https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/navigation_1114-fig1-225x300.png 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7883\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. Navigating on the Nexus 9 tablet minus an Internet connection.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Once at my destination, I tried to use the Maps app to get directions back home. It didn&#8217;t work. Minus the data connection, the Maps app can do only so much. While it was able to locate my house and display it on the screen, that was it. I was also unable to interactively search nearby locations, evcen though that&#8217;s supposedly a feature of offline maps.<\/p>\n<p>I think this update is rather cool. It might not do everything you want in an offline map, but it&#8217;s more than the previous version of the Maps app would let you do. Who knows what magic Google will try with the next update to offline maps?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google has made it available and fully functional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-7872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-android"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7872"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7885,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions\/7885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}