Today in the Play Store there are many offers of various maps for Android. The most famous are, of course, Google maps and Yandex.Maps. But nevertheless, even besides them, you can find really useful maps and navigators with features that are not even in these giants.
One of these applications is Maps Me – offline maps, which offers a large set for finding places and establishments, as well as navigating the city, downloading guidebooks, ordering a taxi to a selected point on the map, and much more.
Maps Me interface
When you enter the app, it will ask for permission to work with phone storage and geolocation. After that, it will locate and save a map of your region to the device. The map takes up very little storage space as it is well optimized. The map and navigator are then ready to use.
Before us is a map on which you can already search for objects of interest. By clicking on the 'map layers' button in the upper left corner, you can turn on the display of traffic conditions and traffic jams in the city, as well as view the metro lines (if there is a metro in the city). On the right are the zoom in and out buttons and a button to return to your location.
By clicking on an object or building on the map, information about it will appear: address, latitude and longitude coordinates, organizations in the building, their websites and phone numbers, opening hours. You can leave a rating review for the property. It is possible to edit the object and add your own organization. With all this, you can order a taxi to your destination directly from the application, the waiting time and the fare will be indicated before the order (using the RuTaxi service). The map itself shows city features very accurately and indicates all roads and sidewalks. Take an ordinary forest as an example, even it contains all the paths for pedestrians.
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Map search
The 'Search' tab allows you to search for a specific object on the map by a key query or search by categories of establishments. Categories of a wide variety of destinations are available: entertainment, food, shopping, medical facilities, gas stations, government agencies and many others. By clicking on a specific category, a list of all objects will be available, they are sorted by distance from you. At the top of the list, you can change the view of the map, where you can see the location of objects.
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Navigation
'Navigator' allows you to lay routes from point “A” to point “B”. The app will suggest the most convenient route. The route can be planned for a car, for walking, metro, bicycle, taxi.
By turning on the laid route, the application is converted into a navigator and will clearly show which way to go, show the distance to the nearest turn. In addition, the speed, travel time, arrival time to the destination and total distance will be shown. If the route is for walking, the route indicates sidewalks rather than highways. The voice assistant also gives hints in the background.
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Things to do nearby
The 'To Do' menu tells you which places to visit nearby for leisure activities. The app will show you where you can book a hotel, show you local attractions where there is a good snack spot and even show you local guides who can introduce you to the city. Each district of the city can find its own characteristics for leisure.
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Working with labels
You can put your mark at any place on the map in order to return to this place later. Maps Me has advanced tagging functionality. You can create a list of labels, edit them and export them to a file. And if you log in to the application (for example, through Google), then you can save tags in the cloud storage and restore them on this or another device.
Maps Me lets you add your organization anywhere on the map, customize it, and make it visible to many potential customers. You can download maps of other cities in the application, all maps will be stored in one place and automatically updated to keep the information up to date. There is flexible configuration of maps and appearance of the application, and network management to save traffic. You can turn off automatic upload and upload data only on demand, which will help save traffic on the way. For weak devices, you can reduce the load by removing unnecessary visual effects.
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Download maps and guides
All downloaded maps work offline. Before traveling, update and download the required maps of the countries or territories you want to visit. All countries and major cities are available for download.
To download travel guides go to settings – travel guides. Choose from over 300 major cities around the world. You can select guides by category: main attractions, city walks, photo views, art and architecture, nightlife, shopping, entertainment, food tourism (bars, cafes and restaurants, markets), routes from famous bloggers, holidays, sports, outdoor air and much more.
In the Play Store you can find many similar programs for navigating the city. Maps Me compares favorably with all in that it has the necessary functionality in one place. By downloading the map offline once, the application will not load the device and waste extra traffic on the road, and all relevant information is updated in a timely manner. Maps Me is in no way inferior to leading navigators, accurately transfers geodata and correctly maps the route. In addition, right from the application, you can book a hotel and call a taxi to it. You can also share the found location with another. The accuracy of the location of objects on the map deserves special attention.
Maps Me is constantly updated and improved. When errors occur, a report is sent to the developers and they work to fix the error. Automatic sending of reports can be turned off if in doubt about maintaining anonymity.
One of the mistakes at the moment may be that, having opened the 'travel guides' item, the application does not offer anything. Perhaps this function is available so far only in large cities.