No more expensive cell phone data connections required with Google Maps (Image: Google)
When you’re on the road in a rental car, do you rely on a mapping app on your phone to get you where you’re going, and to find the things you need along the way? Those apps are great — until you lose your Internet connection.
Now Google Maps says it has solved that problem with a new upgrade of its app.
Users can now download a particular area or region to their phone, and if they lose connectivity, the app will still let them conduct destination searches, obtain turn-by-turn driving directions and find information about specific places along the way.
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How does it work?
According to Google Maps, “You can download an area by searching for a city, county or country, for instance, and tapping “Download” on the resulting place sheet, or by going to “Offline Areas” in the Google Maps menu and tapping on the “+” button. Once downloaded, Google Maps will move into offline mode automatically when it recognizes you’re in a location with spotty service or no connectivity at all.”
Once it finds a connection again, “it will switch back online so you can easily access the full version of Maps, including live traffic conditions for your current route. By default, we’ll only download areas to your device when you are on a Wi-Fi connection to prevent large data fees.”
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Haha, downloadable maps have been on Windows phones for about 4 years now. Funny how so many miss these advancements and think it’s new on the “popular” devices.
Similar thing happened to me in Paris, which is why used that visual. I was there to tour the new (at the time) W Hotel. So new that cabbies did not know where is was. So I used Google maps for about 5 mins to show driver and the data cost me about $15- probably more than the cab ride.
Very cool. And how funny that you would show a map of Paris. A while back I was riding the Paris Metro early on a Sunday morning, and the Metro line I was on suddenly went out of service. All the passengers were evicted from the train and told that no onward travel would be available for at least an hour. I climbed the stairs to street level and found myself in a strange area of Paris with zillions of confusing criss-crossing streets and no maps and no stores open where I could buy a map. Also no people around because it was so early. I’d probably still be stuck there if I didn’t have my iPhone and Google maps. How did we survive before the invention of these wonderful devices?
Thanks! Good tips!
This is definitely an enhancement, but I’ve used GoogleMap to navigate my way around cities for a couple of years now. While the notion of that little GPS blue dot can be disturbing to some it can also be a welcome site in a strange city to know how far you are from where you’re headed. Using the wifi setting, set up your base location on the app and widen it to cover much of the city so the data is downloaded. Once out on the street you can confirm your location by seeing the blue dot, even if you’re nowhere near a wifi hot spot, and IDing the streets to your destination, or just meander about and you won’t get lost or too far from a Metro or bus stop. This new enhancement will help update on-the-go without having to stand outside a Starbucks or McDonalds to tap into their wifi, or turn on the cell function and start paying ROMing/data fees.