Nov. 10th, 2015 18:17
much-improved offline maps
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cosWith the new offline maps features in Google Maps, you can search for places, get directions, navigate, and look up place info, while offline: http://google-latlong.blogspot.ca/2015/11/navigate-and-search-real-world-online.html
I've been using these features in private for a while, waiting eagerly for it to become public! Now I can use this when other people are around, and tell them about it :)
One thing that could trip you up: When you're offline and using an offline map area, you can only get directions to places within that offline area. If you're in the city and going out to the mountains for the day, an easy mistake to make is to just download an offline map for the mountain area where you think there will be no cell coverage. You want to include the city in the offline area you download, if you will want to get directions *from* the mountains back to somewhere in the city later.
I've been using these features in private for a while, waiting eagerly for it to become public! Now I can use this when other people are around, and tell them about it :)
One thing that could trip you up: When you're offline and using an offline map area, you can only get directions to places within that offline area. If you're in the city and going out to the mountains for the day, an easy mistake to make is to just download an offline map for the mountain area where you think there will be no cell coverage. You want to include the city in the offline area you download, if you will want to get directions *from* the mountains back to somewhere in the city later.
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It's unclear what scale of map gets downloaded at what scale of search, though. If I search on "Massachusetts" (on my non-existent Android device, or my iphone in the future) do I get the full detail map with every street/path/business/whatever, or will it be only what I get when zoomed to whatever scale - that's certainly how it used to work.
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I've been using it for most of the year. I was able to download the entire Olympic Peninsula as an offline area for one trip, and all of South Florida (from the Everglades through the Keys) as a single offline area for another trip. There is a size limitation - I couldn't do all of Ecuador for an upcoming trip and had to do it in two parts - but I've never run into a number-of-regions limit yet. Maybe there is one that I haven't run into yet because there's little need to get lots of regions. I'm not sure what you saw in the article that implied there is a limit, though? I don't see anything there like that.
As the article says, an offline region lets you search for addresses, business, or locations, and get directions and navigation, just as you can with connectivity. Perhaps it wasn't clear enough that that means you have a full map, at all zoom levels, with all location information. (You do not get satellite or terrain views, though, or traffic conditions, of course).
It has been a few years since Google Maps offline areas didn't give you all zoom levels, though, even in the old version. I'm fairly sure the public released version has been letting you zoom in or out on offline areas for at least a couple of years. So that's not new.