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I cancelled my OsmAnd subscription because the navigation is mediocre, the interface is awful in direct sunlight, and the developers respond to requests with "I

I cancelled my OsmAnd subscription because the navigation is mediocre, the interface is awful in direct sunlight, and the developers respond to requests with "I don't understand why you want that". Riding back roads, I'd regularly get a navigation prompt telling me to continue straight on the road I'm already on, with no other options. I had better navigation instructions on the software I developed for PocketPC back in the early 2000s. If you try to create a custom route by tapping a spot on a road, it will often actually select a spot on some tiny, invisible offshoot. It will then relentlessly try to navigate to said offshoot, requiring you to pull over and futz around with the interface to delete the waypoint. All of this is made even worse by the low-contrast UI with tiny buttons. It works great when you're planning your route at home. Not so much when you're on the side of the road on a motorcycle on a blazingly hot summer day. Finally, now that I'm going farsighted, I need certain UI elements to be larger. There are plenty of requests for resizable widgets and the developers seem baffled as to why anyone would want that. Instead of giving customers what they want, they just ignore it. Don't even get me started on trying to search for locations. OsmAnd is virtually useless for anything other than poring over a map and manually setting waypoints. Even that is hampered by the first issue I mentioned. Edit: https://imgur.com/a/u23H479 https://imgur.com/a/u23H479 oof

y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
This is some pretty constructive and compelling feedback for the product, kudos. All of these issues would drive me absolutely insane (the motorcycle comment especially hits home). I hope their support team or devs are watching this thread.
kqr 4y ago
> Riding back roads, I'd regularly get a navigation prompt telling me to continue straight on the road I'm already on, with no other options. I had better navigation instructions on the software I developed for PocketPC back in the early 2000s. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this, but it sounds like a bug in the underlying OpenStreetMap data, where one road has accidentally been modeled as two roads with an intersection between them. That you can fairly easily fix on your own. The rest of your feedback I agree with (though I may disagree with your priorities, but that's fine -- we have different priorities.)
- wtallis 4y ago
  It's also possible that OSMAnd was configured to repeat the instruction every 15 minutes or so. I don't recall if that's on by default, but I always turn it on so I get occasional reminders of how far it is to my next turn.
  - snozolli 4y ago
    It happens randomly and sometimes repeatedly within a short period of time. I'm sure it's due to errors in the map data, but it still should be scrubbed from the prompt queue by OsmAnd.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    The worst part of this kind of navigation bug (which I've experienced on other platforms as well) is that it obscures the next actual turn. I'll see there's some navigation event in 20 miles, but when I actually get there its just a "stay on this road for another 50 miles", which at that point its once again "stay on this road for another x miles..." I don't care about all of these stay on the road kind of events, I just want to know when my next exit might be even if that's in 300 miles.
- snozolli 4y ago
  where one road has accidentally been modeled as two roads with an intersection between them. That shouldn't matter. They should be processing whatever data they're getting from the mapping/navigation engine and removing things like that. Any 'intersection' with no actual intersection and no change in road name should be ignored. That's what I meant about the software I wrote in the early 2000s doing a better job at navigation prompts.
smartbit 4y ago
I canceled my subscription of OsmAnd. My main complaints * UX very bad * routing engine crashes on longer stretches (iPhone 13) * sends bicycles on dangerous roads when alternatives exists I switched to guru maps, with subscription it does the routing online and very fast. Has better selection of bicycle routes IMHO. Guru maps is better for bicycling than Google maps despite that their pronunciation is similar sometimes causing confusion.

y-c-o-m-b 4y ago

This is some pretty constructive and compelling feedback for the product, kudos. All of these issues would drive me absolutely insane (the motorcycle comment especially hits home). I hope their support team or devs are watching this thread.

kqr 4y ago

> Riding back roads, I'd regularly get a navigation prompt telling me to continue straight on the road I'm already on, with no other options. I had better navigation instructions on the software I developed for PocketPC back in the early 2000s. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this, but it sounds like a bug in the underlying OpenStreetMap data, where one road has accidentally been modeled as two roads with an intersection between them. That you can fairly easily fix on your own. The rest of your feedback I agree with (though I may disagree with your priorities, but that's fine -- we have different priorities.)

wtallis 4y ago
It's also possible that OSMAnd was configured to repeat the instruction every 15 minutes or so. I don't recall if that's on by default, but I always turn it on so I get occasional reminders of how far it is to my next turn.
- snozolli 4y ago
  It happens randomly and sometimes repeatedly within a short period of time. I'm sure it's due to errors in the map data, but it still should be scrubbed from the prompt queue by OsmAnd.
- vel0city 4y ago
  The worst part of this kind of navigation bug (which I've experienced on other platforms as well) is that it obscures the next actual turn. I'll see there's some navigation event in 20 miles, but when I actually get there its just a "stay on this road for another 50 miles", which at that point its once again "stay on this road for another x miles..." I don't care about all of these stay on the road kind of events, I just want to know when my next exit might be even if that's in 300 miles.
snozolli 4y ago
where one road has accidentally been modeled as two roads with an intersection between them. That shouldn't matter. They should be processing whatever data they're getting from the mapping/navigation engine and removing things like that. Any 'intersection' with no actual intersection and no change in road name should be ignored. That's what I meant about the software I wrote in the early 2000s doing a better job at navigation prompts.

smartbit 4y ago

I canceled my subscription of OsmAnd. My main complaints * UX very bad * routing engine crashes on longer stretches (iPhone 13) * sends bicycles on dangerous roads when alternatives exists I switched to guru maps, with subscription it does the routing online and very fast. Has better selection of bicycle routes IMHO. Guru maps is better for bicycling than Google maps despite that their pronunciation is similar sometimes causing confusion.