Offline Travel Mapping - Maps Me App
Submitted: Saturday, Jan 09, 2016 at 23:17
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Member - John Baas (WA)
Hi all.
I don't think this app has been posted on the
Forum; if yes, I missed it.
We're just about to scoot to the Americas for a month and a friend put us on to these free offline maps with routing; working off your phone or tablet GPS.
When the app is downloaded it also downloads 'all of Oz' road mapping. Other countries, you need to download seperately.
We're using it instead of buying a stack more pricey maps from Tom Tom.
As far as I can tell it doesn't provide voice direction, but if you've got a passenger as navigator it doesn't much matter.
Maps Me App
Cheers.
Reply By: Member -Pinko (NSW) - Sunday, Jan 10, 2016 at 08:13
Sunday, Jan 10, 2016 at 08:13
Hi
John
I have recently used this app in France, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
I think they are great. Accurate, with street numbers and names and not needed to be connected to cellular or wifi, just gps.
In Dublin I needed a replacement camera card, I found the camera
shop address in the hotel phone book and punched it in a 2k walk using the routing and arrived spot on.
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Reply By: Member - Boobook - Sunday, Jan 10, 2016 at 09:05
Sunday, Jan 10, 2016 at 09:05
Looks great, I could have used it on my recent Japan trip, I rented a pre paid SIM for $50 so I could use Google maps, so there you go. Its business case was valid for me and I'll get it thanks.
A word of caution though. It uses Open Street Maps as the map source ( which is free to use). This is like a map version of Wikipedia. Great for
well used areas, but very inaccurate to the point of being dangerous in remote areas. It is user contribution, so not many travelers who are prepared to log gps tracks and update it means not many corrections or entries. As one of many examples, I recall recently there were about 50 serious errors in about 50 square kms of the High country, even missing main roads. Someone using it when the
Licola fires were on recently, would have concluded that the only exit from
Licola and North
Licola was through the fires, when there are 3 other main road or track alternatives that have been there for at least 40 years.
It is the same map data that Mud Map used in their "the map" project. They gave up on that in version 3 for the reasons above according to their support page. ( though note the Android version still uses it and its abot $150 to go to version 3 when they bring it out)
I would say it looks great for the use you are anticipating, but it isn't a viable alternative for Australian off road mapping in remote areas. It would be folly to use it that way.
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Reply By: Zippo - Sunday, Jan 10, 2016 at 12:29
Sunday, Jan 10, 2016 at 12:29
We have Maps Me on both our smartphones, but my personal preference is CityMaps2Go. Don't know if it is still a freebie, but it was when we installed it. Same deal, GPS-only based, D/L the maps for your state/region of interest. Mobile data based map-apps suck (data).
Although we travel with a couple of Garmin Nuvis (we always have a backup in remote areas) a smartphone mapping app is so handy to "look ahead" to your destination without having to disrupt the Nuvi from its normal mode.
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