Rumor: Google Maps to Get True Offline Navigation Soon

• Quentyn Kennemer
• 14 years ago

TomTom, NDRIVE, CoPilot and Garmin have all just collectively cowered in fear as rumor has it Google is set to provide true offline navigation this summer. A player inside the Dutch telecom industry apparently reveal as much to All About Phones, a Dutch site focused on mobile.

Google has already had caching in Maps for quite some time, but it wasn’t like services provided by CoPilot and NDRIVE which don’t require internet connections at all. (Meaning you could use navigation on your WiFi-only tablet.) With caching inside of Maps, you can slip outside of a coverage area and still get navigation directions for quite some time, but you’re still left in the dark if you leave the area that’s cached and still can’t seem to grab a connection.

And considering this is Google, if this rumor turns out to be true, the cost of $0 would all but make navigation decisions easy for most Android users. (I’m aware there’s still a market for premium turn-by-turn apps that have a lot more features than Google Maps.) If true, all of this is set to go down this summer. [via Engadget]