Google Maps Navigation Comes to Android 1.6
Easily the coolest feature of Android 2.0 on the Verizon Droid is Google Maps Navigation. The turn-by-turn navigation system was my favorite thing on the Droid, and it was a shame that the Droid was the only phone that could use it — that is, until today. Google announced the availability of Google Maps Navigation for phones running Android 1.6. Version 3.2.1 of Google Maps is freely available for download in the Android Market.
Note that some features in the Android 2.0 version of Navigation are not available on 1.6. Specifically, the “navigate to” voice command will not work on phones running the older version of Android. If you try this on your phone running 1.6, let us know in the comments if you discover other features that are missing. Also included in this version is support for layers like My Maps, Wikipedia and Transit — the same features introduced in the iPhone version last week.
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When are we going to get this on Windows Mobile? Hopefully Google’s not going to short change us.
I used it to navigate to work tonight (I knew I wouldn’t get lost that way). My music ran fine in the background and the voice directions were clear and loud. It rerouted very quickly and I love how it switches to street view when you arrive at your destination. And the notifications in the notification bar are awesome. I can do something else and just pull down the bar to see the next direction if the sound is off. Really the only issue that I have is that there is no way to clear the data…and it accrues very quickly. The only way to clear it is to uninstall and reinstall. The last google maps update had this same issue and it was solved with the release of donut and that version being built in…I can only hope that that is fixed.