HERE WeGo Maps & Navigation 4+

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.

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.

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.