***Updated: See HERE Maps in action on video at the end of this post!***
First off, a little shoutout to the fanbois and “I don’t like things which are different than I currently use” crowd. If you have to ask
“Why would I want this on my Android?”
I’m going to counter with “You must not be very good with tech stuff”. You sound like Tomtom users did back when Google started developing their own mapping app. Stop it. You’re better than that.
Nokia recently made the announcement that they would be slowing development of their HERE mapping suite on Windows Phone to focus on supporting Android. We’re now starting to see the fruits of this labor with a really solid BETA effort soon available on Samsung handsets through Samsung’s proprietary app store. Of course in AndroidLand (and dealing with the more open nature of the OS) apps can leak, and it’s pretty easy to side load an app without the aid of an official app store. Such is the case with the HERE Maps BETA APK, and of course, just to be a snarky butt, I installed in on an LG G3. W?BIC!
User Interface
For those coming from a Windows Phone, it’s a blissfully familiar interface. The same map color and UI design are largely retained, but instead of a bottom panel with controls, and the Windows Phone three dot menu, users are moved to the sides for menus and features. The toggle on the bottom right gives users the ability to swap between satellite, traffic, and mass transit options. And the Stars at the top give quick access to bookmarked locations. A menu bar on the left gives users controls over mapping, navigation, downloading maps, and settings like speed limit warnings and day/night view. The menu can be activated by either a tap on the bars or a slide-in gesture from the edge of the screen. The right side does not respond to a similar gesture with any features.
Menus
The left menu and transit mode are actually improvements over the Windows Phone implementation which split these “features” into separate live tiles and apps. HERE on Android is under one umbrella, and I think that will be less confusing for folks coming from Google or Apple Maps.
Maybe one of the only limitations I could find on the Android version of HERE is the higher angle 3D view. On Windows Phone you can almost create a flat street level view of the map, while on Android it retains more of a bird’s eye view.
Features
All of your mapping favorites are here. Points of interest, traffic, turn by turn nav with voice prompts, and you even get a safety feature Google Maps lacks with Speed Alerts. A chime goes off whenever you exceed the speed limit. This is actually pretty helpful as even in LA, I often drive through areas where I have no idea what the speed limit actually is and I find myself just driving with the flow of traffic. While still continue to speed? Probably, but at least I’ll KNOW I’m speeding.
Lastly, following in Waze’s footsteps, there’s support built in directly for Glympse, which is a location tracking and arrival service. You send your friend a Glympse message and you can share your location, or allow a contact to track your travel progress with an estimated time of arrival.
But I can see you Google Map folks are still shrugging, still wondering why you would want this, and I do have one last terrific answer.
Offline Maps
Google has done a miserable job in letting you store map data, even temporarily, on an Android handset. You can kind of scan a small area, but it’s not searchable, and it retains almost no POI data. It’s stingy, and it has a bad habit of evaporating when you most need it. If you’re a frequent traveler, or just sometimes have to drive through areas with poor coverage, internet streamed maps can be a very poor tool to rely on.
HERE Maps not only allows for offline, it gives you the ability to download whole maps packs for states and countries. Do you want all of North America, with POI data, stored locally on your phone? It’ll cost you almost 7GB of storage, but you can do it, and then NEVER need to rely on an internet connection ever again. The entire app can be run locally, and there’s a setting to run HERE completely offline. Nokia is also very good about alerting users to updated maps which can be downloaded at the user’s convenience. In an age of 4G LTE and Cloud stuff, local storage can be an oddly liberating feature, and help reduce some of the data usage hitting your carrier’s cap.
It’s an exciting development, and I’m always going to be a fan of competition, especially when the BETA is already this well produced, running fairly smooth and without any major bugs after a couple days on an LG G3. Samsung users will get the first taste of the official Android release, but fingers crossed we see this move to Google Play soon for the rest of us.
Now, I am linking to the leaked BETA below, and I personally have not had any major issues, but I do want to reiterate that this is a LEAKED BETA, so if you choose to take it for a spin, there’s no guarantee it wont do something funky and you can of course expect ZERO support. Enjoy!