OsmAnd map: loading time, routes preview.

Bio_Logik

The app seems promising and more likely I do not know how to tweak it properly.
Im in the uk, dwlded england maps and greater london map. each time i launch the app, the loading time exceed 10secs
i enter my location and where i want to go, it cannot find a public transport route, in London, very surprising.

I started to go through settings and it is very thorough.

Wanted to know other's people opinion on this map and if they find any promising alternatives for offline maps? (maps.me, vaze, etc...)
I am using Google Play services as Location source with network permissions. i tried using android api, with no noticeable difference

thanks

PS: im on P6a

treequell

Bio_Logik When I last used OsmAnd I found the quality of the address search results were not good enough for my needs. So I switched to Organic Maps for offline map navigation, and am happy enough with that. Like OsmAnd and Maps.me, the map data comes from openstreetmap.org

I have commonly seen Magic Earth also recommended.

For public transport navigation, I usually use the PWA for Google Maps in Vanadium or the website of the operator (e.g. TfL in London).

MetropleX

Bio_Logik I've just had a look at the public transport options and you're right, so after a bit of digging came across this:

Buses:

California, USA

UK (Based on NaPTAN Node)

Switzerland

Cologne, Germany

Tenerife

Ottawa, Canada

Norway

Source: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Public_transport#Railways

Their public transport dataset looks incredibly limited at the moment. OSMAnd is great for navigating by car/foot but public transport is definitely not a strong suit.

[deleted]

Bio_Logik
I've used OSM for many years around the world and in London as well with ...Greater London w/o any significant issues.
On my phones for many years there has been no space for Google Play services

Bio_Logik

treequell thanks for the input. it seems thta PWA is the way forward for may apps alternatives which does make sense.

ill check the 2 apps u mentioned. citymapper would also be an alternative for journeyplanner.
tfl app used to be horrendous

have a nice weekend

Bio_Logik

MetropleX sweet, thanks for that. ill check it out

wojon

Osmand is quite good. My experience is that you have to understand the logic of the search function. But granted, it can be much improved. The navigation for pedestrians or cars is sufficient for my needs too. However, the route calculation is sometimes ridiculously long. For example, if you want to go from one city to another and avoid highways it sometimes takes like 15-20 minutes (seriously) to calculate that route. That part sucks.

Is Organic Maps good for car navigation and for pedestrians?

As for public transport: You might want to try Transportr. I used it in London and many other cities in the world and it is doing a really good job. Just make sure you take the apk from their github repo. It's outdated on F-Droid.

Bio_Logik

wojon organic maps seems ok so far. osmand ui is a bit of a put off tbh. ui design is as important as back end to me.

as someone mentioned in a different post, GOS (or others like lineage or COS) are teaching me to strike the balance between convenience and privacy, with compromises.

zehyani

Organic Maps is pretty decent. magic maps apparently has a tracker. I think sometimes you have to find the spot you want on the map and then say route there to get directions in organic maps.

Bio_Logik

zehyani hey, can u provide source for that?

is it this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.generalmagic.magicearth

Bio_Logik

[deleted] thanks. u dont find the loading time painful? as for the ui, it isnt in par with modern app imo.

zehyani

that is the link. when i go there it says

This app may share these data types with third parties
Location
Icon image
This app may collect these data types
App info and performance

I hope this helps. i really think Google Maps and Google Earth are fantastic apps, but
do not use them

Bio_Logik

zehyani thanks, i saw that, but i dwded offline map of my country and rove all permissions.
after checking many apps, magic earth amd organic map are my choice. osman deffo a no go, not intuitive and loadig time is horrendous (considering it is an offline map, doesnt make sense) for routes amd journey, either google map pwa or tlf pwa.

grapheneman

OsmAnd works perfectly but you need to install from Huawei AppGalary and also it needs Huawei HMS Core which is like Google framework. ( yes i am aware that China can do some telemetry via this)

taemex

Help, I can't get the speaker to work with OsmAnd! It gives an immediate error code "Cannot start text-to-speach engine". What does that mean?

de0u

taemex "Cannot start text-to-speach engine".

Has a text-to-speech app been installed and configured? If so then the "Play" button in Settings, Accessibility, Text-to-speech output should say something.

taemex

So a text-to-speech app is not native to Graphene and must be installed first? This, I did not know. I recently installed, "Speech Recognition and Synthesis from Google" to allow DuoLingo to work because speech-to-text would not work otherwise and this seems to also have made OsmAnd speech work, even though that is technically the reverse, text-to-speech! Everything works fine now!

treequell

taemex even though that is technically the reverse,

Google Speech Services includes support for both speech to text and text to speech.