

Under the hood of Google Maps 5.0 for Android - abraham
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/under-hood-of-google-maps-50-for.html

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enomar
The new maps are simply amazing. The 3D building with pan and rotate make me
feel like I live in the future.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The old mobile maps were frustrating to use. Very data hungry and high latency
and with quirky UI bugs. It was very much a translation of the web app meant
for desktop use on low latency broadband to a mobile app with only a few
tweaks. For example, pinch zooming would work surprisingly, by zooming the
low-res tiled image and then effectively translating into a button press to
zoom in/out one level, leading to a very frustrating and clunky experience
that essentially removed any advantage of using multi-touch gestures over just
pressing the zoom in and zoom out buttons.

Google has not only fixed those problems, they've improved the experience
several times over. It's fabulous. It's faster, it's responsive, it's
seamlessly interactive, it's a pleasure to use.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I totally agree with you about the previous version's shortcomings, but it is
a little like "my hovershoes! The fusion drive only lasts for 8 hours!"

You have a frickin map of the earth in your pocket. With a database of all
places in the earth and directions to anywhere on the earth.

I mean, holy crap.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Oh, I quite agree, and that alone is one of the major reasons why I finally
upgraded to a smartphone this year after resisting for so long.

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andrewjshults
Between this and adding priority inbox to the Android gmail app, Google has
given some phenomenal holiday presents. This will be really nice to still be
able to access (most of) the maps while on the subway. It'd be great if they
gave you the option of always caching certain areas.

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spicyj
Google Maps and Navigation for Android really makes me want an Android phone
now. How long until Android actually runs (well) on my iPhone 4?

~~~
jokermatt999
Probably never. The iPhone lacks the 4 button configuration that's standard on
Android phones. It can be made to work, but it will always be a hack.

Also, not to sound like a fanboy, but why would you want Android on your
iPhone? I can understand iOS fans' concerns about the UI on Android not being
as polished as iOSes, but it seems like if you're going to use Android, using
an Android phone just makes sense.

~~~
CrazedGeek
Honeycomb has on-screen buttons:
[http://www.phonedog.com/2010/12/14/honeycomb-does-not-
requir...](http://www.phonedog.com/2010/12/14/honeycomb-does-not-require-
physical-buttons/)

WRT Android on the iPhone, it's like Linux on a Mac: the hardware is usually
higher quality. A 3GS and a Samsung Intercept go for the same price on a 2
year contract, but the Intercept feels like a cheap toy compared to the 3GS.

~~~
StavrosK
And, like Linux on a Mac, the drivers will never be just perfect.

~~~
CrazedGeek
I don't know, my 13" MacBook Pro is pretty good driver-wise with Ubuntu:
<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro7-1/Maverick>

Yes, a bit of manual configuration, but it seems to work pretty well.

(Also, I've used quite a few Android phones with incredibly broken default
drivers. YMMV)

~~~
StavrosK
I run Ubuntu on my MacBook as well, but the camera fails sometimes, the
brightness control is wonky, the sleep is hit and miss, etc. Still, what am I
going to run? OS X?

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bockris
the math on this is pretty staggering to me.

360 billion 256 pixel square image tiles is about 21PB! (uncompressed, of
course)

[http://www.google.com/search?q=(256*256*360000000000)%20byte...](http://www.google.com/search?q=\(256*256*360000000000\)%20bytes%20in%20PB)

and you know they have multiple copies cached around the world for
redundancy/speed.

~~~
mseebach
It's generated on the fly from vectordata. The dataset is huge, but not at all
on that scale.

~~~
bockris
That doesn't make sense to me, the article clearly says "pre-rendered". Maybe
they don't render the middle of the ocean tiles beforehand but there would be
no reason not to save a tile once it has been rendered.

~~~
yatsyk
Article says that cells sent to device prerendered it doesn't say ALL cells
prerendered.

~~~
bockris
Right, but there are layers that can't be pre-rendered (satellite) or are
probably slow to render (terrain).

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boredguy8
It's a great change and a great tool, but:

Am I the only person who thinks the color scheme changes are bad? Subtle, but
the greens and yellows are harsher than the pre-rendered versions. Not a
defeater: just a tiny, tiny complaint.

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51Cards
I had noticed _something_ was different about the new Maps app but I hadn't
paid attention to the details and put it together what was happening. Of
course now that they mention it's all vector based it's blatantly obvious when
you watch the screen render. Absolutely wonderful.

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nodata
The new maps are really good, but the readability of the labels, a feature
covered on HN quite recently, has suffered as a result of the upgrade.

