3 ms·

No good maps is a reason not get this phone for me.

by orkoden 12y ago

JTon 12y ago
Depends on your requirements but the web version of gmaps may suffice
- dublinben 12y ago
  The (mobile) web version of Google Maps barely works. It's slow, clunky, and often simply fails to load tiles. It is absolutely no alternative for a standalone navigation app.
  - JTon 12y ago
    I use it often and its performance is acceptable by my standards. I do have LTE though.
peatmoss 12y ago
As someone with more than a passing familiarity with geospatial, I was excited when Amazon announced their intention to work on their own maps product. IIRC, it was to be OSM-backed, and presumably integrated into their AWS offerings. I could see Amazon eventually creating a decent competitor to Google / Bing / Apple. But then on the other hand, Google > Bing > Apple.
- sytelus 12y ago
  Most people who are not in this field don't understand this but the reason most new smartphones will fail is simply because there is simply no quality options for maps available on those phones. Maps and local search is #2 or #3 most important thing on smartphones depending on which data you look at. If Google ever wants to kill iPhone, all they have to do is pull the plug on Google Maps app and slowly but steady users will floac off. Unfortunately building high quality modern maps and local search that works world wide (or even just US for that matter) is extremely hard. Sure, you can buy data from NavTeq, InfoUSA and likes but what you will get in return is equivalent of MapQuest quality circa 2000. If you really want to build something that is at Google or even Bing level, you will need far more data, world class geocoding, rendering, partnerships from Yelp and likes, mining images and things like open hours from web, freshness to make sure you don't have closed businesses, huge staff to constantly fix and curate tail end, high performance tool set, huge serve infrastructure and so on. And that's just for the start. To actually compete with Google or Bing maps you then need all other bells and whistles such as transit maps, walking directions, elevation profiles, building polygons, bird eye view, street views, information on construction, 95+% accurate turn-by-turn navigation among many other minor details that you completely take for granted. To accomplish this level of features and quality, you will need staff that easily can could in couple of thousands and ability recruit the top talent in many fields including maping, cartography, rendering, indexing, distributed computing, machine learning, computer vision and so on. Even if you do get managed to accumulate this talent, it will still take multiple years to boot up and by that time your competition is already has moved on to next level.
  - peatmoss 12y ago
    I think you're completely right. For me, maps is absolutely the most important feature of my phone, followed by texting, then web, then voice. Bing isn't a bad runner-up to Google in a lot of ways, but it is clearly still a runner up. That last quality hurdle requires a lot of foot soldiers on the ground collecting data. Google has such a small army. Microsoft doesn't--at least not at the scale Google does. Apple's release was a facepalm for several reasons, not least of which was their omission of public transit routing. As an urban planner, I was incensed enough to drop IOS as my last phone upgrade in favor of Android. Moreover, I would have liked for Apple to double down on open map data by creating the software and supporting infrastructure to collect geospatial data from all those portable, network-connected sensors they keep selling. I'd have put up with an inferior Apple map product if I could rationalize it in terms of them helping build OSM up.

No good maps is a reason not get this phone for me.

by orkoden 12y ago

No good maps is a reason not get this phone for me.

JTon 12y ago

Depends on your requirements but the web version of gmaps may suffice

dublinben 12y ago
The (mobile) web version of Google Maps barely works. It's slow, clunky, and often simply fails to load tiles. It is absolutely no alternative for a standalone navigation app.
- JTon 12y ago
  I use it often and its performance is acceptable by my standards. I do have LTE though.

peatmoss 12y ago

As someone with more than a passing familiarity with geospatial, I was excited when Amazon announced their intention to work on their own maps product. IIRC, it was to be OSM-backed, and presumably integrated into their AWS offerings. I could see Amazon eventually creating a decent competitor to Google / Bing / Apple. But then on the other hand, Google > Bing > Apple.

sytelus 12y ago
Most people who are not in this field don't understand this but the reason most new smartphones will fail is simply because there is simply no quality options for maps available on those phones. Maps and local search is #2 or #3 most important thing on smartphones depending on which data you look at. If Google ever wants to kill iPhone, all they have to do is pull the plug on Google Maps app and slowly but steady users will floac off. Unfortunately building high quality modern maps and local search that works world wide (or even just US for that matter) is extremely hard. Sure, you can buy data from NavTeq, InfoUSA and likes but what you will get in return is equivalent of MapQuest quality circa 2000. If you really want to build something that is at Google or even Bing level, you will need far more data, world class geocoding, rendering, partnerships from Yelp and likes, mining images and things like open hours from web, freshness to make sure you don't have closed businesses, huge staff to constantly fix and curate tail end, high performance tool set, huge serve infrastructure and so on. And that's just for the start. To actually compete with Google or Bing maps you then need all other bells and whistles such as transit maps, walking directions, elevation profiles, building polygons, bird eye view, street views, information on construction, 95+% accurate turn-by-turn navigation among many other minor details that you completely take for granted. To accomplish this level of features and quality, you will need staff that easily can could in couple of thousands and ability recruit the top talent in many fields including maping, cartography, rendering, indexing, distributed computing, machine learning, computer vision and so on. Even if you do get managed to accumulate this talent, it will still take multiple years to boot up and by that time your competition is already has moved on to next level.
- peatmoss 12y ago
  I think you're completely right. For me, maps is absolutely the most important feature of my phone, followed by texting, then web, then voice. Bing isn't a bad runner-up to Google in a lot of ways, but it is clearly still a runner up. That last quality hurdle requires a lot of foot soldiers on the ground collecting data. Google has such a small army. Microsoft doesn't--at least not at the scale Google does. Apple's release was a facepalm for several reasons, not least of which was their omission of public transit routing. As an urban planner, I was incensed enough to drop IOS as my last phone upgrade in favor of Android. Moreover, I would have liked for Apple to double down on open map data by creating the software and supporting infrastructure to collect geospatial data from all those portable, network-connected sensors they keep selling. I'd have put up with an inferior Apple map product if I could rationalize it in terms of them helping build OSM up.