google maps downloads maps on the fly as you navigate...

you can pick an area to download to SD card in advance... so you can download it over wifi and not 3g... saving your data credit and speeding it up when you do need it... speeding it up a lot....

but does anyone know how to download all of the uk ?

you can select an area to download, but there's a size limit... not sure if it's an area limit or a file size limit... max file size looks to be about 63meg for me... (it's hard to select an exact size)


it's handy to have as a backup to a satnav... especially if like me you go off all over the county without any preparation.... but it's pretty crap if I'm somewhere with crappy reception and have to sit and wait for it to download maps over 3g... and pay £1 a meg for it too
(no free data for me.... I don't really use it)

What about something like NavFree, a free SatNav? I assume it's on Android too?

there are lots of satnavs available on android which all the maps are stored locally on the device. Some free and some free if you know where to look.

I've got FoeverMapLite on my android, not really needed to use it yet but its handy just to have on just in case.  Doesn't have great ratings on the market but mostly seems to be people who don't have wifi connections or think its slow downloading...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skobbler.forevermaplite&hl=en

*Only map tiles are downloaded. You can’t search for points of interest or get navigation directions offline.
   
*Maps are automatically deleted after 30 days. There’s no warning and no way to change this behavior. If you depend on your map, you might find it has disappeared when you need it most.

just read that about google maps....

going to download a different program instead


shame... i quite liked it

downloaded... freenav.. or summit like that

30sec download, fired it up, picked my map, 411meg downland.. 10 min later all installed and job done

you'd have thought it would have been easier for google to let you download entire maps that selecting a small area and download that ?

and wtf is the point in downloading maps, if you can't use those maps to navigate?

you'd have thought it would have been easier for google to let you download entire maps that selecting a small area and download that ?

All to do with the licensing. Google will get its mapping data from 3rd parties and they would probably have to pay a lot of money to be allowed to allow their users to download/make copies of said maps. Its annoying, but there's plenty of solutions out there that use openstreetmap data now

The satellite imagery is provided from several other sources and streamed through google earth/maps (that's what the copyright info at the bottom of the pages is EG, infoterra etc). Pretty sure the map data originally will have been the same, though it's now probably been modified heavily, though the original data copyright rules probably apply so any derivatives (google maps) probably shouldn't be reproduced without the original sources permission.

I don't know whether streetview would have been Google, a company contracted by google, or a company that google bought the rights for the data, if that makes sense. Geospatial data is pretty lucrative. It wasn't until last year that the ordnance survey got with the times and released some data for free public use via opendata. When you actually read the ToS for Google earth and its API it's pretty strict in what you can and can't do, pretty sure most businesses use it illegally if you take the ToS literally.