Google Maps – Turn by turn navigation in Pakistan
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 12:26
Google maps has also enabled turn by turn navigation directions in its already popular Google-Maps-Mobile. Google maps is a free application that you can download on your smart-phone. Only thing you need it to work is a working data-connection on your smart-phone. You can use Google maps on smart-phones with or without GPS. Using this new feature you can give source and destination of your journey and the software will display a suggested path that you should follow.
The software is free to use and poses serious threat to other paid navigation solutions available in the country. Google maps available for Pakistan are based on data provided by its users on Google map-maker and once ample data is available and is reliable to a certain degree, it is ported onto Google maps. Google maps has grown at a high speed both in terms of users as well as contributors on map-maker.
Here is a sample walk through of the app where I requested directions from Main Market to Liberty Market in Lahore.
1. Get Directions
Launch Google maps on your phone and wait for a few seconds so that the application initializes the data connection and GPS. Then select “Get Directions” from the menu.
2. Select Start-Point and End-Point
You can select the start point by:
- Choosing your current location (detected automatically by Google-Maps).
- Enter an address
- Select a point on map
- Select from the recent searches
You can select the End-Point by:
- Entering an address
- Select a point on the map
- Select from recent searches
As an example, I entered the address by typing it:
3. Choose a travel mode
You can choose to travel by car, on foot or by public transport. Public transport mode is not not available in Pakistan yet.
4. View Results
You can either view the suggested path on the map or a step by step instruction is given on-screen that you can follow to reach your destination. See following screenshots for the result output:
Turn by turn instructions:
Path shown on map:
This was interesting to see that the software gave different paths for the same source and destination when different mode of travel was selected. Following are two different paths given by Google Maps when traveling mode was different.
It is also interesting to note that the behavior of the application is slightly different on different devices. For example, above walk through does not show any “Favorite Locations” when it comes to Google maps. Some devices like Nokia smart phones support “Favorite Locations” as a native feature and Google Maps also support that list of favorite locations as possible Start or End-Points in a navigation request discussed above.
If your phone has a feature different from the walk through above, please don’t forget to leave a comment.
Last but not least, google maps on your browser obviously has this feature enabled too for Pakistan now. See a sample directions result for a path from Gawalmandi to Kalma chowk in Lahore.
Muzzammil says:
January 13th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Hey this is great, Although Windows live maps is also good appliation but Google is taking lead here by enabling turn by turn navigaion. Too bad Windows Live maps are not as detailed as Google maps.
cheers,
Muzzammil
http://www.biggtech.com
BA says:
March 7th, 2010 at 12:02 am
Yeah, you are right Muzammil. This is just because of the crowd-sourcing for their map making.
Thanks to Pakistani Internet Users.
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