[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by srishiva

http://www.androidauthority.com/goog...-india-656470/

This gives what has changed.

There you go - Thanks for Sharing. Quoting the interesting bit from this new feature

But wait – didn’t Google Maps already do this before? In a certain way, it sure did. You could download maps from some areas, but the system was pretty confusing. With the new system users can download maps for cities, counties and even countries. That is a huge step. Not only does it help data savers and emerging markets with slow internet, but it will be a life saver for the road warrior who often has to go through areas with no signal.

[praveen_v]

The latest update enables the following

1. Improved offline management. You can create, name and auto-update new offline areas. Auto-update is a new feature wherein the map gets auto-updated every 30 days. Previously it used to prompt to update manually once it expires.

2. Navigation & Search in offline mode. This was not available before and with the latest we can search for POIs and street names in offline map and navigate directly.

3. Increased offline download area. Previously it was limited, but now I can download upto an area of 350Kms..

[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by praveen_v

The latest update enables the following

1. Improved offline management. You can create, name and auto-update new offline areas. Auto-update is a new feature wherein the map gets auto-updated every 30 days. Previously it used to prompt to update manually once it expires.

2. Navigation & Search in offline mode. This was not available before and with the latest we can search for POIs and street names in offline map and navigate directly.

Now these 2 were certainly not there earlier for sure and must say it will give a tough time to PNDs in the market today. The Search never really worked with Data off.

[GJ01]

Originally Posted by srishiva

This gives what has changed.

Thanks SriShiva. As Parag too mentioned earlier - this feature has been there for a long time and one of the reasons many of us chose to go for "other" options like HERE or Sygic is purely because of their offline capabilities.

All the same, thanks to the OP for pointing this function, Google seems to be realizing it losing out to these other apps and therefore wants to 'bump' up these features.

Quoting from the article:
Offline access is one of the main factors that made some other mapping apps preferable to some users. And that makes sense! You don’t want to be using data every single time you go somewhere, right?

[i74js]

Slightly off topic yet related to my experience with google maps: Whenever I drive interstate with google maps, near to the destination, the maps take me inside the city and roads full of traffic, while there are good highways available, which I discovered after calling the destination hotel.

The recent one when I traveled to Bharatpur and was amazed at the roads which were picked by GM closer to the destination, while the hotel that I booked was right on the highway which I was on. GM made me divert into the city to reach the destination and it took me 30 minutes to cover 8 km. while I would have reached the hotel simply by continuing on the highway for another 10 km.

Any suggestions please.

[Suvo_Petrolhead]

Originally Posted by kat

I just tried downloading an area near my place and after the download, it states that it expires in 30 days. Does this mean, I need to keep downloading the same map again and again every month? If that is the case, as of now, Here maps seems to be the best available off-line navigation option.

Same for me too. I have downloaded the Pune map yesterday and today it's showing as expire in 29 days. This is ridiculous if we people have to download same thing every month! I was hoping that it would be download state by state as available in HERE maps.
Only thing is better in Google map is the detail of the locations which are better than HERE maps.

[kavensri]

Originally Posted by Suvo_Petrolhead

Same for me too. I have downloaded the Pune map yesterday and today it's showing as expire in 29 days. This is ridiculous if we people have to download same thing every month! I was hoping that it would be download state by state as available in HERE maps.
Only thing is better in Google map is the detail of the locations which are better than HERE maps.

Guys, there is a setting 'Automatically update offline areas' which by default is ON. And we also have an setting 'Download preferences' with options like 'Wi-Fi only' and 'Wi-Fi or Mobile'. So, please check these options.

[Zappo]

Originally Posted by Suvo_Petrolhead

Same for me too. I have downloaded the Pune map yesterday and today it's showing as expire in 29 days. This is ridiculous if we people have to download same thing every month! I was hoping that it would be download state by state as available in HERE maps.
Only thing is better in Google map is the detail of the locations which are better than HERE maps.

Originally Posted by kavensri

Guys, there is a setting 'Automatically update offline areas' which by default is ON. And we also have an setting 'Download preferences' with options like 'Wi-Fi only' and 'Wi-Fi or Mobile'. So, please check these options.

This is the trade off. One of the reasons for GMaps resistance/ambiguity towards offline availability relates to the fact that they keep updating the maps with mind boggling details ever so frequently. If a road is closed for work today and continues to remain so you will find that within a couple of days GMap shows the blockage and asks you to take a diversion. Also, the search can search for newer additions on a daily basis. Now search will also work on offline maps.

So if you consider all that I am not surprised they want you to update the map every 30 days. In fact it is actually very long a period of grace they have given. My thought though is that they should not ask you to download the entire 400 mb every 30 days. That's a tedious process besides being costly. Instead of that it could be incremental. You may find that every month you only download some 5-10 mb of updates.

[KomS_CarLog]

Cool indeed! Can I download an entire route say Delhi to Agra, and then use the navigation offline?

[kat]

Originally Posted by Zappo

This is the trade off. One of the reasons for GMaps resistance/ambiguity towards offline availability relates to the fact that they keep updating the maps with mind boggling details ever so frequently. If a road is closed for work today and continues to remain so you will find that within a couple of days GMap shows the blockage and asks you to take a diversion. Also, the search can search for newer additions on a daily basis. Now search will also work on offline maps.

So if you consider all that I am not surprised they want you to update the map every 30 days. In fact it is actually very long a period of grace they have given. My thought though is that they should not ask you to download the entire 400 mb every 30 days. That's a tedious process besides being costly. Instead of that it could be incremental. You may find that every month you only download some 5-10 mb of updates.

Being Google, I assume that they will ask us to download the entire 400 MB again. Why? The offline videos section in YouTube comes with a very similar restriction. One can't view the downloaded videos off-line for more than 48 hours or so and above that, one must download the video again .

I might be completely wrong, though.

: People travelling to Malaysia (or similar places where offline youtube videos viewing is restricted) with downloaded offline videos from India will be surprised to see that all downloaded videos are vanished as soon as youtube is connected to a local wifi/data network there. The videos become visible once they are back to India!

[kavensri]

Originally Posted by Zappo

Instead of that it could be incremental. You may find that every month you only download some 5-10 mb of updates.

I am not sure how these maps are managed internally? Because, if they are not 'modular', then replacing the entire maps may be the only solution for Google?
Also, I completely agree with you that the 30 days period that they have in itself is too long. So, my suggestion is, update your maps whenever you are going out for an unknown location or a long drive.

Anyway, all these affect only when we are not connected to DATA connection. But how many of us do not enable DATA while driving?

[arjab]

Good. The offline feature is very useful in low cellphone signal intensity areas or no signal areas, especially when one is driving through the boondocks or particularly in the extreme North - East region of India where signal strength is a bit iffy.

I usually use Nokia's HERE" Maps and find the offline mode to be quite accurate.

It seems Google finally bit the offline bait and closed the gap with "HERE". Competition, indeed, does wonders!

[ottocycle]

Yes there is certainly a lot of improvements. Earlier, it was just downloading the basic map data. However, now it downloads the full searchable information and also allows turn by turn navigation. Area coverage has also increased atleast 4 times (from my experience).

[Ironhide]

Maybe it's simplifying it too much, but here's my two cents

Q. Is it a good thing ?
A. Yes

Q. Will it be as good as Here Maps / Other offline navigation software?
A. Unless Google Maps provide seamless downloading of maps of the entire country or states and allows us to store them in our phones/ navigation devices, the convenience of an offline navigation software like Here Maps OR Sygic will always score over Google Maps.


(PS: I recently drove a fair bit in the Kumaon, where the network was splotchy at best. Limited cacheing (10x10 km or 50x 50 km) of Google maps wouldn't work well in such remote places, and that is why offline maps are far more convenient in such scenarios. For those who always find a strong uninterrupted cellphone 3G signal, Google Maps is obviously the best choice!)


Cheers!

[Games Goblin]

I think HERE Maps does a better job of offline navigation. For downloading the entire India maps to your device, it takes only 1.5 GB. You can also download the maps separately for each state. It never expires and you only need to update them if you wish (the updates are incremental - one does not have to download the entire area again).

For windows phone users like me, there is no google maps app from google. Lot of 3rd party ones are available though - and a few of them have an option of using the offline HERE maps as the base map and showing the POIs from google maps on top of it - this option has served me well.