OpenStreetMap
As promised before, here’s my review of a navigation application based on OpenStreetMap data, OsmAnd:
OsmAnd: Navigating With OpenStreetMap
I have to say that when I started using OsmAnd+ for surveying location, I saw occasional rendering hickups. It was not as pleasant as the other mapping applications, but it was still doing it’s job.
Things changed dramatically when I tried using it on the roads with 45 mph (76 km/h) speed limit with complex intersections where zoom in/zoom out or turns caused the whole thing to redraw so furiously it was hard to keep track of what was where.
I posted a number of videos to show what I mean and I regret to say that I ended up with a result completely different to what I’ve hoped.
Yes, it is Open Source, and it has a ton of features (and almost awesome OSM Live!), but I just cannot use it for car navigation, sorry.
Discussion
Comment from gosausee on 23 May 2016 at 08:28
Use maps.me! It works perfect!
Comment from Diana-44 on 23 May 2016 at 10:25
Great work!
Comment from Warin61 on 23 May 2016 at 10:42
I use it for bicycle and pedestrian navigation… where I like the rendering of things I can use.
The redraw speed will probably depend on your phone operating speed…
Comment from ryebread on 23 May 2016 at 17:37
@Warin61, yes, bicycle and pedestrian navigation work sufficiently well, and I switched to OsmAnd being completely sure the rendering issues won’t affect my ability to use it as a navigating device. I tested it on 2013 Moto X, 2014 Nexus 5, 2015 Nexus 9 tablet and found no difference in rendering performance between these devices. I removed and reinstalled the application to make sure that nothing I’ve configured influences that (OSM Live used to cause even longer redraw times, but not anymore).
There’s nothing else I would use for location surveying, though.
@gosausee, MAPS.ME, while being shiny, also suffer from delayed map updates, I’ll get to that in some future post.