Android App of the Month : Navfree

Navfree


Link to Navfree page on the Android Market
Well for my first Android App review I have found a really great one.  If you drive a car or have to find your way around this is one app that you won't want to uninstall once you have tried it.  It is a SatNav application that does not require connection to a network to function once you have chosen your destination and what it more it is free. It is ad supported however but this is a small price to pay for an app of this quality.


When you first start it up it asks you to choose a country.  It then downloads the maps for that country.  The Australian map is about 179MB.  After that the only reason you need connectivity is to find a location.  I am guessing that it uses Google Maps to get a longitude and latitude position to pin point where you want to go on map.  Once you have chosen this route your can untether yourself from the network and the GPS will work out how to get you there.  If you take a wrong turn it will recalculate and set you back on track.  Obviously your phone or tablet must have a GPS receiver. The software will ask if you want to enable the GPS each time you start the program.  The Maps cover most of Europe, India, parts of South America and Canada.  It also covers South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.  You only need to load the map that you need so you can save memory space ignore the other countries maps.  There is now a version for the USA.



We all know how much maps cost for commercial GPS systems so how come these are free.  Well the answer is that the app uses Open Street Maps which is a world wide project a bit like Wikipedia where people contribute to the maps to make up a community based product. (/http://www.openstreetmap.org/ )


I have used the app for the last few days and it has performed flawlessly.  It seems to be more accurate than the maps used by the commercial GPS units.  On one route I regularly take the car is consistently about 100 metres off the road, not so with this program, it was right on.  The only area where it was out of date was driving through a suburb where the roads had only changed in the last couple of months.  I was very impressed. By the way the maps are updated every couple of months

Navfree display in demo mode

 As you can see the display is clear.  At the bottom left you have your speed, time of arrival (can be set to travel time) and how far to your destination.  At the top left it displays the next junction you have to negotiate.  The button at the bottom right hand corner exits this screen and takes you back to the menu screen.  The display turns so that you are always travelling up the screen.


They are still adding features to the app so not everything is implemented yet. You can however save places to favourites so are available offline.  I have checked this and it works without the need to connect to the Internet.


The two devices I have checked it with is my phone, the Nexus S and the Asus Transformer.  If you have any other experience with this please leave a comment.