Google Maps on Android
When we advised Google Maps for the T-Mobile G1, we set out to actualize a abundant mapping appliance that took abounding advantage of the G1’s hardware, like the blow screen, accelerometer, and GPS, as able-bodied as the abysmal arrangement affiliation fabricated accessible by the Android platform.
One of my admired things to do with Google Maps on Android is to analyze new and admired places. You can pan about and zoom in and out calmly appliance just your deride on the touchscreen — a big additional for all those times if that added duke is unavailable. And if I wish to see a restaurant or architecture up close, I can about-face to Artery Appearance and appearance a panorama from artery level. I can even about-face on Compass access to let me attending about the panorama by affective my buzz up, down, and to the side. It’s like bustling up a basic periscope anywhere you wish to analysis out what’s there with your own eyes. Analysis out the video beneath for a quick demo. Note that Artery Appearance on Android is alone accessible in the US at this time.
When I’m in a new city-limits or just a new allotment of town, I like to about-face on My Location. It can use GPS or just the abutting corpuscle belfry to acquaint me area I am and re-center my position in the average of my awning if I access the edge. If I’m walking or in a auto in a close city, like New York, I zoom in to artery akin and about-face on GPS for the accomplished accuracy.
And as I aberrate the city, I can seek for adjacent businesses (like restaurants), and use Android’s chip Map appearance to save seek after-effects to my contacts. For instance, if I acquisition a restaurant that I like, I can save it to my contacts and afresh after on alarm it or Map it with one touch. In the future, if I do addition seek with Maps, I ability even see this acquaintance afresh as a appropriate seek aftereffect forth ancillary accomplished queries.
Maps is aswell chip with email, IM, and the web on Android. For instance, artery addresses that arise as apparent argument in these apps become concrete zones that you can bang on to yield you beeline to Maps. Something agnate happens if a Google Maps hotlink is pasted into an email, IM or placed on a web page. If I blow it, I can accept whether to appearance the map in the browser, in Google Maps, or in any added appliance that’s congenital to handle what’s accepted to Android developers as an “intent.” Or, I can accomplish the best already and save it as my absence map-viewing appliance (Google Maps, in my case).
Perhaps best of all is that a lot of of the resources, flexibility, and functionality in Google Maps are accessible to any appliance accounting for Android. Cab4me and Locale are both Android Developer Challenge winners that acclimated the Android belvedere to body acute applications with maps and area at their core. Any developer can use Android’s MapView and area APIs to body location-aware adaptable applications like these. While the aggregation is appreciative of Google Maps on Android and added air-conditioned applications we’ve apparent to date, we’re appropriately aflame to see what new kinds of maps and location-enabled applications developers actualize in the advancing months.
