If there ever was a reason to buy an Android phone, it’s Google Maps for Android. Google has given a fresh coat of paint to almost every aspect of Android since it’s launch but few Apps have grown up more than Maps for Android since the launch of the G1.
Google Maps for Mobile
It should be no surprise that Google Maps is one of the crown jewels of the Android platform. Google Maps has been around much longer than Android has. After first launching in February of 2005, it rapidly became an example of what can happen when a development community is given access to tools to manage large quantities of useful information.
Not only is Google Maps older than Android but Google also had launched a mobile version of the Maps app well before the Android platform. Maps for Mobile launched in late 2007 and is currently on phones from the iPhone to Blackberries to the WebOS based Pre.
If all of these phones have Google Maps for Mobile, why is Maps Android’s killer app? Find out after the break.
Google Maps for Android
Google Maps for Android has rapidly developed well beyond the capabilities it has in any other phone. At launch, it had all the features we had come to expect from Google Maps for Mobile. You could determine your location from the phone’s internal GPS. You could search google for local results on the map. You could even slap a satellite image over your map to see a birds eye view. In fact, maps allows you to add a number of layers to your maps including one which shows how heavy traffic is in real time. Other layers will display nearby transit lines, Wikipedia posts related to locations on the map and you can even create layers to display your favorite places.
Another feature is Latitude which, when enabled, will share your latest location to your gmail contacts. A layer in the Maps will show you the current location of all your gmail contacts allowing you to find friends without a flurry of phone calls.
Maps has grown faster than Android has and the feature list has quickly swelled. To accommodate the frequency of the improvements, Maps updates are no longer sent via over the air system updates and instead are now found in the Market. If you don’t have the latest version of Maps, we highly recommend downloading it from the Android Market. You don’t want to miss out on the new features that have come to the App.
Navigation
The Droid released on the same day as Google announced Google Maps with Navigation. As the name suggests, this update brought turn by turn voice guided navigation to the Android platform, for free. The the announcement sent shock waves through the GPS market. Stocks of the major GPS manufacturers plummeted at the announcement.
Google Navigation does everything any $300 GPS does, sure it may not have a few of the bells and whistles that a high end GPS might have, but you won’t miss any of them. You can search for directions, by keyboard or by voice. If you don’t know exactly where you’re trying to go, Navigation doesn’t mind, just tell it to “navigate to grocery store” and your phone will guide you in a tolerable, though demanding female voice. When approaching a turn the phone zooms in to show you the intersection more clearly and when you get close to your destination it will show you the picture from street view of where you’re going. These features alone are enough to make this a killer app, but Google clearly is not done there.
Installing the latest version of Google maps brings some more new features, tucked away just out of sight. Activating these makes Maps all the better.
Labs for Maps
If you have the latest version of Maps, you still may not have access to all the latest features of the application. Many of the most recently added features are hidden away. You may activate any or all of these features easily. From the Maps app, hit the menu key and select “More”. Choose “Labs” from this menu to get a list of the new features you may activate.
The scale bar probably should have been in Maps from day one. It does just what it says, adding a graphic to show the current scale of the map as you zoom. The bar appears in the lower left hand corner of the map and shows the scale in both metric and imperial units.
Another new feature in Labs is the Layer Button which provides one click access to your layers. This button is added to the lower right hand corner of your maps just above the zoom controls. Also in maps is a new layer, the terrain layer. This layer will show the physical contours of the land, including mountains and valleys by using color shading to denote elevation.
Another extremely useful addition to Maps is the inclusion of a compass arrow. When enabled, this feature will change the indicator for your current location from a dot to a blue arrow. This arrow will point in the direction the internal compass detects you are facing. This can be particularly useful when trying to follow a map while walking.
The final new feature in the Labs menu is the Popular Categories feature. This creates an extra step when searching maps but can also prove useful. When performing a search, you first are given the option to choose from a list of suggested search terms. While this list is clearly useful, it probably needs to be expanded to really pay off. The same can be said of the available layers.
It seems likely that the majority of the Labs features will be integrated into one of the upcoming releases of Maps and Google is clearly not content with this feature set. It seems likely that it’s only a matter of time before Google looks to match the full feature sets of even high end GPS’s such as a speedometer and custom voices. Even with the current feature set, Google Maps is, by itself, a great reason to consider an Android phone. Just like the MP3 player in the iPhone or the messaging features of a Blackberry, Maps on the Android platform is reason enough to buy.
Leave us your thoughts and feedback about your experiences with Google Maps in the comments or head over to the Android Navigvation Applications section of the forums and discuss Google Maps in more detail.
Tags: Featured Application, Google Maps, Review
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