Can anyone suggest an app that will allow you to navigate without having an internet connection? I will be going to London in May and instead of using a map to find my way around, I would like to be able to use my smartphone to navigate but I want to avoid the hefty usage fees that my cell provider would charge while overseas. I know that you can download maps from Google maps to your phone and view them offline but you can't navigate without an Internet connection. Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Posted by
Pensacola
9110 posts
MapsWithMe is pretty good. You have to download by country while you have a connection, then you've got if forever. I just stuck England on and zoomed in to the parts of London that I know blindfolded. It was missing a few street names, but showed the streets and enough stuff nearby that you could easily hive it out. You can flip off cellular data and the gps antenna still works fine. What you don't get unless you have the ProVersion is a search feature. I'd think real hard about that one. It took me just a minute or so to get England loaded a on the regular version. I quit at six percent in five minutes of waiting for Pro to load. Florida's already loaded on Pro - - I just fiddled with it and it appeared dead-on with a couple of obscure addresses around here. I've never come across one that has turn-by-turns or even plotted routes, but I've never looked, either. Watch out for battery suck if you leave the gps on.
Posted by
Kansas City
132 posts
London Visitors A-Z has that feature. It has a search function built in so you can use it when not connected to the internet. You can also mark the maps with points of interest. It is $1.99 from the app store for iphones. I don't know if they have it for Android. There are 2 other versions for a larger area or more features, but they cost a little more.
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
32747 posts
Colleen, do you have a real iPhone or is it an android or blackberry or other ecosystem? If you have a real one I can suggest NavFree which routes instantly and is as accurate as my stand alone sat nav but shows more streets. Can't beat the price either. It has a pretty decent POI list too, but not over many.
Posted by
Pensacola
9110 posts
Note to self: Do what Nigel says, always.
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
32747 posts
I've just realized that the OP said London. I revise my answer. What you really want in London is a pocket atlas, we use the tiny one by Philip's Street Atlas London. Pulling out a smartfone on London's crowded pavements and looking lost may be less good than pulling out a pocket atlas and looking like you know what you are doing... Sometimes you lose the satellites in the tall buildings, but the app I suggested also uses mobile phone cell triangulation so is very accurate even when the sats are invisible to it.