Google Maps

Like an aged crony returning home from a prolonged trip, Google Maps is behind on iOS. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, a bit surprising, and now satisfying. And it’s a best navigation app permitted on a device.

Absolutely, it runs circles around a much-lampooned Apple Maps. Yet, it’s also vastly softened over not usually a Google Maps we had behind in iOS 5, yet also a chronicle permitted by a iOS browser. The finish interface redesign adds a new twist, and turn-by-turn directions with voice, Street View, some-more points of interest, and Google’s mapping correctness pacify a pot. Oh, and don’t forget a cherry on top: movement directions.

Our vital dispute is that there is no dedicated iPad app as there is for Google Maps on Android. You can use a app on Apple’s tablet, yet we have to review to a smaller shade or use pixel doubling to enhance it to a iPad’s full size. Google Maps also doesn’t confederate with your handset’s contacts list as Apple Maps does.

Interface
After downloading a giveaway app from a App Store, we can pointer in to go any serve (it’s not required). Don’t be fazed by this additional step, as there’s a good reason for it. Once we pointer in, you’ll see any prior searches and formation and save favorite places. See this related beam on removing started with Google Maps for some-more details.

The interface is clean, simple, awfully user-friendly. There’s a margin during a tip to hunt for locations or addresses, a categorical map window front and core as we would expect, and a add-on in a reduce right that slides out so we can select layers. The layers territory pops in from a right to let we toggle traffic, open transit, and satellite views, and it offers a integrate to a Google Earth app for 3D views and other facilities (more on that in a minute). And once we daub on an residence or location, we can burst right to Street View yet withdrawal a app. It takes a integrate of tries to figure out how to get there (click on a associated photo), yet you’ll remember after we do it a initial time.

Indeed, losing Street View was a large understanding when Google Maps went divided in iOS 6. But now it’s behind and an even improved experience, arrangement adult during a bottom of a interface when we perform a search. In Street View we get a same knowledge we find on a Web, with 360-degree views during travel level, vouchsafing we appropriate your shade to stagger a camera. But there’s also a symbol in a reduce right to switch to a viewpoint that lets we pierce your iPhone around, regulating a accelerometer to demeanour during your vicinity as yet we were looking by a window. You also can use a informed arrows on a belligerent to pierce adult and down a street.

No, Google Maps doesn’t yield a same “flyover” underline that Apple Maps brings — there’s a quasi-3D viewpoint in customary map mode, yet not all buildings will describe as they unequivocally are — yet that’s not a large loss. Yes, flyover mode is flattering and fun to use when you’re bored, yet how useful is it really? We’ll gladly take Street View in exchange, given that underline delivers a pedestrian-only viewpoint that can be unequivocally practical. Heck, regulating Street View, we can indeed travel inside some businesses and meddler around. Depending on your comfort level, that’s possibly cold or creepy, yet it’s something that we can’t get anywhere else.

In reality, a Transamerica Pyramid looks some-more like a pyramid.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Kent German/CNET)

Besides, if we unequivocally wish a flyover equivalent, we always can switch over to a a aforementioned Google Earth. Though that requires an additional step, a choice is there and like we pronounced before, we doubt many people use flyover for navigation or plcae search. You’ll need to download a Google Earth app, of course, yet it’s also giveaway from a App Store.

Navigation takes full advantage of a iPhone’s multitouch features. You can splash and zoom, stagger a maps by spinning fingers opposite a display, corkscrew with one finer, and tip a map adult and down by shifting dual fingers plumb opposite a display. Double-tap to wizz in and out and use a singular daub to get information about a specific indicate on a map.

Rounding out a interface is a plcae apparatus in a lower-left corner. It’s made like an arrow (similar to Apple Maps) with your plcae denoted by a blue dot (also identical to Apple Maps, yet reduction luminous). To a right of a hunt bar are icons for removing directions (we’ll enhance on that underline in a subsequent section) and for adding your home and work addresses and saying your Maps hunt history. There’s also a environment for promulgation feedback to Google on any map problems only by jolt your phone. Below a Search bar is a informed compass for anticipating your instruction or locking a map to indicate north.

Features
Immediately after Apple Maps landed, business and critics complained aloud (and rightly) of false plcae hunt and a miss of map information over points of interest. Fortunately, Google does hunt improved than many everyone, and Google Maps for iOS is no exception. You also can hunt for addresses like we would expect, yet also landmarks, internal restaurants, businesses, and common hunt terms like “pizza.” Google database is some-more endless and generally most some-more accurate than Apple’s offering. It had some misses — for instance a hunt for “burgers” around a CNET offices missed some apparent formula — yet we felt some-more assured about a results.

Apple Maps was tighten with a restaurant, yet not perfect.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Kent German/CNET)