Offline map apps.

are you asking for help for more travelling now or reporting what happened to you?

Do you need urgent answers?

Interesting information.

Thank you for sharing it. I was planning on using Google Maps while in Venice, and clearly that won't work. I just tested this at home, flipped my phone to Airplane mode, and yep, all the walkways in Venice disappear.

This is one of the reasons for having a separate piece of equipemnt for each job. My phone never loses a route on maps.me when I stop to tke a photo, because I carry a camera (the pics are better, too...)

The only drawback with maps.me I have found is that it doesn't do long range really complicated navigation - Tours to Davos had to be programmed in 3 steps, but probably would have been easier using the "normal route" rather than going via Germany Austria and Lichtenstein

I don't ask electronic apps for walking directions; I just look at where I am and where I want to go and choose my own route.

I still haven't tested maps.me, but I've used both Google's MyMaps and CityMaps2GoPro on my current trip. MyMaps has a rich database available when you're creating a map or updating it while online. I guess it's a matter of keeping data requirements low, but I was surprised that when I'm offline, it cannot seem to locate anything I haven't previously loaded onto my map. So if you're out and about and learn about a sight you're interested in, MyMaps won't find it for you until you can get a Wi-Fi (or cellular) connection.

CityMaps2Go, which operates offline once you have completed the download of the appropriate map, has a much weaker database (or maybe just an inferior index or search algorithm). It has often frustrated me by failing to recognize places I searched for. However, it does find a lot of places, so I'm not totally limited to things I had the foresight to load into the program ahead of time.

Returning to the subject of MyMaps, I'm glad it was discussed on this forum shortly before my trip, because I've enjoyed using it. However, I doubt that anyone will be surprised to hear that the initial map set-up goes considerably faster if you're sitting at a desktop computer rather than doing the work on a tablet. I don't want to think about what it would be like on a smartphone.

Google Maps "offline" works great - for driving, not for walking or public transit, as you've found out.

SIM cards and data are cheap now - not sure why people won't splurge to buy one if they already have a smart phone? I find my smart phone with data saves me hours of frustration I used to spend on paper maps and bus/train schedules to walk around and navigate cities in Europe. Last year I spent a whopping 10 euros for 2GB of data (plus about $8 USD for the SIM if you don't already have one) for my 10 day trip to Portugal on my Dutch Vodafone SIM - well worth the investment.

Thanks to Nigel (above) no urgency, just reporting. Next time I'll buy a sim.

I have a camera so I rarely use my iphone camera so I can't speak to switching between maps.me and the iphone camera. What I was wondering is do you mark/save/pin your destinations? If so, if you find yourself out of maps.me and then need to search for your destination again, it should come up right away on the search bar after typing a letter or two. We used maps.me for all the navigating in the rental car. We were much happier with that than with GPS on our previous trips. Of course GPS is only as good as whatever maps have been downloaded. Initially we had a problem using maps.me when walking because it wasn't intuitive which direction we should start walking.