MapFactor has updated their free GPS navigation app for Android phones, and also made it available for Windows phones.
In the past, if you wanted satellite navigation on the road, you bought a GPS unit, like the ones available from Garmin, Magellan and others. Thanks to the proliferation of smartphones with GPS chips, that sort of navigation technology is now available free of charge, with several different apps offering turn-by-turn navigation that doesn’t require an active cell tower connection (you’ll have to download GPS maps to your phone).
MapFactor is one of those free apps, using maps based on the OpenStreetMap project (read more about that here). They’ve just added several new options to their app, including support for mobile devices running Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile, along with Android 2.3 / 3 / 4 / 5 and newer. The new update has up-to-date OSM maps (March 2015), including new maps of Iraq and Peru (useful for adventure riders). Users can also customize map colours and languages, and the software now does a better job of analying your velocity profile, for the purpose of calculating optimal routes.
You can find out more details about MapFactor at the Windows Store here, or the Android store here. It’s a useful sort of thing to have on your phone even if you already have a GPS unit, as a just-in-case emergency backup.
For Google Maps, offline navigation can be problematic. The last time I compared all the GPS options, the problem with Google Maps was that you could only download small chunks of Maps data for offline use – that might have changed at this point, but at that time, MapFactor was superior. At that time, MapFactor offered downloading of many different maps at once, enough to cover the whole continent if your phone’s memory permitted.
Why would someone use this instead of Google Maps?