HERE WeGo Maps & Navigation Ratings and Reviews

Awesome Offline Map; But Need Improvement in Navigation

Its a very useful offline map while exploring places and using navigation for walking across city blocks. 3D map with building layout helps very much to identify the landmarks and path to follow.

Now talking about the navigation, its annoying sometimes. When a desired route is selected, sometimes you have to make some detour to bypass the commute hour traffic or other obstacles. So Here map is constantly trying to put me back to the originally selected track. Its fine to show a road for some period of time so that you can stay on the previously selected track. However this stubborn suggestion lasts until all possible route to the previous path is exhausted. And you can see the ETA is greatly changed by doing this.

So the suggestion here is to let the user continue on current track after some number of attempts. Its a nice to have feature to show a message to the user whether they want to stay in same route or are they trying to get back to original route selected.

Great offline map, especially for outside of US

So I went for a 10-day road trip across 6 countries in Europe and chose not to get data service (I kept in mind I could always activate 24-hr for $10 anytime), so it was super stressful to rely on Google map because I had to load it in the morning at airbnb, find a nearby Starbucks, McDonald’s or airport when I lose connection, sometimes just by accidental taps or being idle I guess. On day 3, I met my cousin in Switzerland who introduced me to this life-changing app. It has rerouting function which I love, the appearance is fine, the voice is a bit weird, and I have a love/ hate relationship with the fact that it beeps (love) but jumps me out of radio (hate) every time I go over speed limit (too sensitive and many times the limit is not up to date). The last day, to deal with strike traffic in Paris and to make sure I could get to the airport, I still chose to pay $10 so that I could have Google Map. For a free app that saves money, this is great! If I spend the previous night adding destinations into my favorites, it becomes even more convenient. Make sure you have space and the download is complete because the map for France is heavier and when I came back to France from Switzerland, I realized the map was halted only when I needed it the most. Still, very highly recommended.

So close, yet so far

I’d like to see full screen use on the iPhone X like Google Maps or even something similar to Apple Maps. It’s trivial I’m sure, but it’s attention to detail. It does appear night mode uses true black which will conserve battery. Being able to download maps is great, it saved us on our last trip to Europe and made getting around a breeze. I also haven’t noticed any ads lately, which was fairly annoying not to be able to opt out of. It would be nice to have an auto switch feature for the units, it’s already using our location, can’t be that hard to know what areas use which units on their roads, there are only three. The voices are a bit digital and processed sounding, not major, but smoother voices would be nice. The directions can be confusing, especially the lane indicators and arrows. If you’re a Windows 10 user you’ll notice the native MS Maps app is in fact Here We Go. This made planning trips in Europe easier since we could see things on my Surface Pro 4 in larger detail then use the iPhone on the streets for navigation.

Reality is I’d only use Google Maps if they offered offline maps. However, they don’t, so this is where Here We Go really shines. If Here We Go could get their interface, search and options on par with Google Maps, I may just remove Google Maps. At the moment there’s a long ways to go still.

Superior Offline Mode

The thing that I love about Here Maps is the ease of downloading a country instead of sections like Google’s. Though, it’s still not capable of reliability like routing, place of interests, and live traffic. The routing takes you to more turns than making it simple, most of the business listings are either outdated or missing, and you get barely traffic report updates. The 3D building is a great feature especially how it shows an imagery of a tower building, which is another great thing but although it doesn’t cover that much area. I also like the voice guidance they’ve provided, it has a detailed guidance like it tells me to “enter the highway”, and it comes with more languages but the quality of the audio is low which you can barely hear at all. The most I disliked about this app is CarPlay support and it’s been 3 years that they still haven’t implement it but yet Magic Earth already have. This navigation tool has it’s potential but I believe that it’s putting less effort to improve it overtime. It is safe to say that you can use it for your holiday trips but be sure to be alert with your surroundings as this app would not be accurate all the time.

Great offline map but please improve offline search algorithms

Offline navigation is great in areas with no cell service like near the ocean, but searching offline leaves a lot to be desired. Example if I search “restaurants” online I get tons of results of nearby places to eat. But if you search “restaurants” when in Offline mode, you only get results if the business literally has the word “restaurants” in the name. Made finding places to eat during vacation to the ocean difficult because we had no service and offline search is not good. The app should still be able to categorize and search for types of businesses even when in offline mode.

Another example is if you search “gas station”. When Online it will list off all gas stations in the area, but doesn’t when in Offline mode.

Developer Response ,

Thanks a lot for your review! To investigate these cases with the offline search though, we'd appreciate if you could send an email to appsupport@here.com with some more details. It would be important for us to find out in which region did this happen and what offline maps you've downloaded. We'll wait for your comments.

As good as it gets!

This app is as good as it can get. It even works good for over the road trucking as I have been using it forever to drive a semi truck to all of my customers. Do not get me wrong, this is not a truck gps, but what this is.... is a very nice gps that gives you routes on the main highways and for this reason, I have decided that this is better than Google Maps anyday!

By the way, Google tracks and records your location at all times and saves this information along with your ip address stamped on it at all times and even use the info to market products toward you depending on your travel habits! As a offline mapping software, I can trust this more than I trust Google who also owns Waze.

Apps like these use less data, are easier on your mobile phones battery, and will even help your phone last longer by not depleting the battery by logging your data all day! I know this app is not as popular as Google or Apple Maps, but it should be!

Something New

Last I used this app it was the old one I guess before it was bought and redone.
This new app while still in its infancy is wonderful to look at compared to the other. Seems to be as accurate as Google maps and the GPS on my Lexus. It has a few options that I’ve never seen on other apps. It’s missing a few but I’m sure those could be added. Waze didn’t become what it is over night. Waze was a great app until they began all the ads. That move killed any attraction for it and got it removed from everything I own.
HWG looks to have been improved quite a bit so I’m a be trying it out again.
I did notice that at least in stand alone mode without any internet connection, it is heavy on the battery so if your in a are where you have to have a internet less GPS app. You would do well to have your power cord charging your phone while using it.

Fabulous app for offline driving in Italy

We tried HereWeGo driving around Northern Italy, both with and without data service. It was better than Google maps because it found destinations when we searched better than google did and it showed more of the actual streets when driving, which helped to make sure we were taking the correct turns. Also, when we were offline, HereWeGo still gave us voice instructions. When we had google voice instructions, sometimes they came late. We used this app to explore around Lake Como, drive up into Switzerland, drive to Venice, drive around Prosecco wine country and drive back to Milan. Just make sure to download the maps you need before you hit the road. I also tried it out offline around home before we left to test it out.

The reason why I don’t have google maps

I have been using Here Maps since the early days in Windows Phone and they were the first ones that gave you the chance to completely download entire cities or entire countries offline... offline navigation doesn’t have just the names of the streets but also names of places, landmarks, businesses, the navigation can find you routes using public transportation. Your mileage may vary depending on how well a city is digitalized.

I have moved long ago to iOS and up to date I don’t really have the need to switch to google maps as I can see they’re still playing catch up to this amazing app. This should be you maps app wherever you go, specially if you’re in Europe, hands down the best map around.

Turn by turn directions have been degraded

I’ve been using this app since it was Nokia Maps. To me, the thing that distinguished it was the clarity of its turn by turn directions which were incredibly easy to follow. For some reason, they decided to fix something that wasn’t broken and have eliminated much of the detailed directions that made it so good. Granted their navigation still isn’t as bad as Google Maps, whose navigation to me is so bad as to be unusable; half the time you can’t even get any sound at all out of Google Maps, a bug that has remained unfixed for years. But Apple Maps, which used to be pretty bad, has significantly improved its navigation and it’s now far better than Waze or HereWeGo. Waze is still best if you’re on the highway and want yo know where all the speed traps are. But for local driving, right now Apple Maps is the best.