Decent GPS/map/nav for Windows Phone?

MichaelR

Hello,

My wife has a Lumia 640 phone. It has the Microsoft Maps and HERE Maps app, which use the same engine and are horrendous, at least for use in Ireland. The navigation is often wrong and some places are just not in there (like Castletroy College).

Google Maps (on my Android phone) is so much better, but apparently does not exist on Windows Phone.

Is there a map and navigation system on Windows Phone that would work well in Ireland?

TBi

MichaelR wrote: »

Hello,

My wife has a Lumia 640 phone. It has the Microsoft Maps and HERE Maps app, which use the same engine and are horrendous, at least for use in Ireland. The navigation is often wrong and some places are just not in there (like Castletroy College).

Google Maps (on my Android phone) is so much better, but apparently does not exist on Windows Phone.

Is there a map and navigation system on Windows Phone that would work well in Ireland?

I use here everyday and find it great. You could try waze. They used have a windows app.

kayos

Never had an issue with Here or the newer Microsoft app's. They have gotten me around Ireland, Europe and the US.

Fingleberries

TBi wrote: »

I use here everyday and find it great. You could try waze. They used have a windows app.

HERE Drive+ / HERE Maps are very good, they allow for offline storage of maps which is useful if you are going to be roaming or in a different country or you don't want to use your Data allowance for this. Microsoft Maps (on Windows 10 Mobile) is also a decent solution.

Waze is good, it uses Google Maps as it's source (unsurprisingly, it's a Google company) but you generally need to be online and using your Data allowance. The good thing about that is that you are likely to have more up to date traffic or other information because they can use the information from all the Android users running Waze / Google Maps. On the downside, Waze have said that they will not be updating the Windows Phone app any more.

kayos

Fingleberries wrote: »

Waze is good, it uses Google Maps as it's source (unsurprisingly, it's a Google company) ...... On the downside, Waze have said that they will not be updating the Windows Phone app any more.

Surprise surprise Google not doing Windows Apps...

MichaelR

No problem with data allowance, I will try installing Waze.

I was in Cork City once, on Old Blarney Road, and tried HERE maps for a drive to Blarney. It sent me through the city center!

And today, in Limerick, HERE maps failed to find Castletroy College (the secondary school), offering College Drive in Castletroy instead, a completely different place.

This is useless. I do like HERE's UI, and when I use Google Maps on Android I miss the speed display that HERE has. But I need proper navigation and proper search.

AnCatDubh

I could never get Waze to work properly on my 930 (and was a big fan of it on both Apple and Android platforms). I gathered that development stopped on WP platform as soon as Google took it over so I just didn't bother pursuing. But as I've moved to Here maps/drive (about 14 months now) I wouldn't willingly go back to Waze (or be looking for anything else for that matter). I find it really good / does what it says on the tin.

Never tried google maps as a satnav on any platform so no comparisons to offer there. Being a fan of Here Drive, the Maps software with Windows 10 looks really good too (effectively a here drive/maps upgrade). With Here Drive, I haven't had any routing issues that I can think of like you've described other than one what seemed bizarre route it generated somewhere around Dublin (can't even recall the specifics) but this is just my experience and by enlarge all routes are as reasonable as anything else that i've used or seen.

In fairness to Waze and even prior to Google buying it, it's search capability was really good (probably as it was predominantly crowd sourced in one form or other and new too so data was fresh) and it interfaced with the likes of google search and others such as foursquare to give lots of results. The downside of this was the accuracy of some of the google content being mediocre - sending you to non existent places or incorrect locations on occasion. If you didn't know the destination reasonably well then you could end up elsewhere. Though its much better now, the mapping in rural locations was a bit hit and miss too but as it was crowdsourced you could also add locations if you had been there which was a nice feature. Something similar is there in Here Maps.

So, in terms of place searches - my experience has been that overall it is a bit of a trade off of quality over scope/volume.

CoPilot is also available on WP platform though I haven't used it on anything modern (I was quite fond of it back in the days of Windows Mobile on a SP3 and the venerable Titan - That was probably early 2000's !).

kayos

MichaelR wrote: »

I was in Cork City once, on Old Blarney Road, and tried HERE maps for a drive to Blarney. It sent me through the city center!

In fairness Cork city is one of those places I have seen many GPS's give screwy routes!

MichaelR wrote: »

And today, in Limerick, HERE maps failed to find Castletroy College (the secondary school), offering College Drive in Castletroy instead, a completely different place.

This is useless.

And right now I open the Windows 10 mobile Maps app typed "castletroy college, limerick" hit search and do you know what the first result listed was? Castletroy College and its in the right place and all as I used live near there .

Maybe try updating your maps? As the Windows 10 Maps app use the same maps as the HERE Drive app.

beauf

MichaelR wrote: »

Hello,

My wife has a Lumia 640 phone. It has the Microsoft Maps and HERE Maps app, which use the same engine and are horrendous, at least for use in Ireland. The navigation is often wrong and some places are just not in there (like Castletroy College).

Google Maps (on my Android phone) is so much better, but apparently does not exist on Windows Phone.

Is there a map and navigation system on Windows Phone that would work well in Ireland?

I find it really good myself. With the one key advantage its completely offline. So bad data connections are not an issue. Its much better than my Garmin. Routing for me is generally ok.

I do agree that often there are things you can find on Google maps but are not on Here or MS Maps. What I generally do is find it on Google Maps, find a road near by then look that up on Here maps.

Other than I find Google maps and Here maps much the same. That said I find Google maps better on the Desktop.