cross-posted from: https://psychedelia.ink/post/526072
My impression of Organic Maps immediately improved when I started driving. It talks! It knows exit numbers! It can tell you which lanes to use! Sure, it isn’t as polished as Google Maps, but all of the functionality is present. The UI is high-contrast and easy to read, although I wish the text showing exit numbers/street names was a little bigger. When you’re simply on the road and following directions, Organic Maps feels every bit as intuitive as Google Maps.
As my fiancee and I prepared to set off into the boonies, I plugged in the address of our hotel. About 45 seconds later, Organic Maps returned the 300-mile route to our destination. It can take a lot longer to calculate longer routes using your phone’s processor instead of a huge cloud server. It didn’t really bother me though; 45 seconds is nothing compared to the 6-hour trip ahead. If that’s the cost of using a maps app that doesn’t spray your personal data all over the internet, I’ll pay it.
I love the concept of organic maps, and do even use it occasionally, but for now I’m mostly sticking to OSMand.
The main feature missing for me is the ability to customise the map styles. I like using map apps for hiking and organic maps default (/only) style is ugly at best and unusable at worst for this.
Interesting… I love the simple and clean type of Organic Maps, but it’s cool that there’s an app for everyone out there.
The Organic Maps team is working on an outdoor style, for hiking and similar situations. They had it in a beta version some time ago, but they decided to rework it, so it is not ready yet. You can check in a couple of months if you’re interested in seeing how it looks like.