What Is the Best Free GPS App for Android OS Phones? Discussion

[Adama D. Brown]

With a profusion of free and paid GPS map and navigation apps available for the Android OS, which of those free apps offers the best performance and options? In this hands-on review, Brighthand takes a look at five of the top free GPS options: Google Maps Navigation (GMN); Telenav GPS Navigator; GPS Essentials; Loopt; and Waze Social GPS & Live Traffic. We also pick a winner.

Read the full content of this Article: What Is the Best Free GPS App for Android OS Phones?

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[Hook]

As you pointed out with Telenav, free versus pay gets tricky and I hope you continue to point this out in this series. For instance, I use Copilot Live Standard, which has packages that can get very pricy. On the other hand, for $4, you get downloaded maps of North America, 2D navigation and turn-by-turn voice. That's all I need and it's an absolute steal. The maps also get updated fairly regularly.

I don't mean this as an ad for my favorite mapping program, but people need to know what you get for a basic price (or free) and what kinds of plug-ins drive up the price and how far. Also, do these programs nag you for plug-ins. There may be a limit to how in-depth you are going to go in this series, and I understand, but whatever you can do to make these distinctions would be appreciated.

Great idea for a series of articles, by the way.

[Adama D. Brown]

As you pointed out with Telenav, free versus pay gets tricky and I hope you continue to point this out in this series. For instance, I use Copilot Live Standard, which has packages that can get very pricy. On the other hand, for $4, you get downloaded maps of North America, 2D navigation and turn-by-turn voice. That's all I need and it's an absolute steal. The maps also get updated fairly regularly.

I don't mean this as an ad for my favorite mapping program, but people need to know what you get for a basic price (or free) and what kinds of plug-ins drive up the price and how far. Also, do these programs nag you for plug-ins. There may be a limit to how in-depth you are going to go in this series, and I understand, but whatever you can do to make these distinctions would be appreciated.

As a matter of fact, the paid versus free versus "free with upselling" distinction and when you should choose one or the other is going to be covered in a fair bit of depth in the second article. CoPilot also gets included there, although I primarily tested out CoPilot Live Premium.

Currently there's just the two articles written, but I wouldn't have any objection to going back to the well. For that matter this was originally supposed to only be a single article, then the profusion of apps resulted in it getting split up. However whether there's any more ends up being the decision of Jacqueline Emigh, the software editor.

[Staincross]

I find the review of Waze to be unfair. The Wazer locations are delayed 2-3 minutes and the positions are updated every 30 seconds to a minute. I do not often see a Wazer last on my screen for more than one update. You have no idea which direction others are headed, their speed or destination. These points greatly reduce the security concerns you made, unless a Wazer was sitting stationery in a vehicle for 5 minutes or more. Possibly outside their ex' house.

Although I am a fan of the app, I think the biggest detractor of Waze is that someone can have it running on their phone as they walk down the road and Waze will report that stretch of road with an average speed of 4km/hr. I have noticed the last couple of days when travelling at low speed, it now pops up asking if I am in traffic, so perhaps it now uses this as a confirmation before reporting it as heavy traffic.

[Adama D. Brown]

I find the review of Waze to be unfair. The Wazer locations are delayed 2-3 minutes and the positions are updated every 30 seconds to a minute. I do not often see a Wazer last on my screen for more than one update. You have no idea which direction others are headed, their speed or destination. These points greatly reduce the security concerns you made, unless a Wazer was sitting stationery in a vehicle for 5 minutes or more. Possibly outside their ex' house.

They may have made changes to the app in the four months since it was written, because that emphatically wasn't the case when I used it: locations were in real time, and continuously tracked, as well as direction and speed being reported.

[SGosnell]

OSMand (Open Street Maps for Android) is a pretty good free alternative. It works either online or offline, no data connection is required after you download the maps. You can make corrections to the maps if necessary, and add POIs. It's a little clunky to use, but after you figure it out, it's not difficult. There is a pay version, OSMand+, that adds some features and eliminates the ads, which I bought. It's pretty cheap, and worth the cost. There are several other navigation apps on Google Play, far more than mentioned in the review.

I find myself using Waze most of the time, mostly for the traffic info. I drive a couple of hundred miles to and from work, once a week, and I know the way, so I don't really need detailed navigation, just a warning to avoid traffic jams and road hazards. I don't get these from other apps. And I don't care if someone knows I'm driving to work. If I were really paranoid about it, Waze does work offline, without an internet connection, provided you download the route before you leave. You obviously don't get traffic info, though.

If I really need driving directions, I use Google Navigator. It's accurate, and it provides good routes. My main complaint with it is that it won't even initialize unless the GPS on my phone is activated, even though it's connected to a bluetooth GPS. If I don't have an internet connection for some reason, OSMand is what I turn to.

Waze doesn't claim to provide optimal driving directions, although it does learn routes that you use regularly. To me, that isn't a big asset, since I don't really need a GPS to follow a route I've driven many times. But if all I want is traffic info, Waze is definitely an asset.

In short, the app I use is the one that does what I need at the time, and they provide different options. That's why I have at least 3 GPS nav apps on my devices all the time. Horses for courses.