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Best off-line map App

H

hh235

Lurker
Looking for your ideas of the best offline map app that provides functionally like a simple Garmin GPS for automobiles.
I have plenty of room on my micro SD card for maps. Optimally I'd like to be able to navigate on the roads with my car in the US by entering in an address, business, etc.

Thanks.

Motorola A856 with 2.2.3
 
Use NavFree. It is an adequate offline mapping app. I use it whenever I drive out of the country into the States. There are two versions: a US version and an international version. Use the US version if you are in North America. Use the international version everywhere else.

NavFree will get you to where you are going. However, the search function is rather poor and may not give you the correct location. If you do use NavFree, I highly recommend that you verify the destination using Google Maps beforehand when you have access to Google Maps. I verify every location I plan to navigate to before I leave home or before I leave an area where I have internet access.
 
+1 for NavFree, it's perfectly usable, and I've not had any accuracy issues i the UK. I'll be using it in Spain later in the year, so I'll see how it copes with non-UK maps.
 
I second CoPilot Live. I've used it hundreds of time the past 2 or more years and have found it very reliable. Recently bought it for my wifes tablet and she loves it.
 
I found NavFree a bit heavy on my phone but it worked as well as any once loaded. Maps are a big thing for me and I pay by the Meg for data so I did a lot of searching and testing. As I recall all the free versions of offline mapping apps use OSM maps which are unreliable for door to door address searching without using some data to get accurate coordinates. If Garmin would come out with an app comparable to their devices then I would be willing to pay for it in a heart-beat.

I ended up selecting Mapfactor Navigator as my favorite (although some of the features are in non-intuitive locations and some routes are a bit funky) because it used less than 100k of data to get a location while all the rest I tried took 500k to 2M. Regardless of which app I use I have to do a reality check if I do not use data to help with the address to make sure it is sending me in the general area I want to end up.

With Navigator I recently discovered another benefit that the author has made an application available on his site to convert GPX files to his proprietary POI files which enabled me to extract the KLM info from Google's "My Maps" and then convert and import it into Navigator locations.

ETA: I was only testing free apps. I have not tried any of the paid apps like Co-Pilot which looks worthy of consideration. Also, Navigator has an option to purchase and install with Tom-Tom maps which I did not try either. Any paid option with commercial maps would be less likely to suffer the potential reliability issues of OSM maps.
 
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