The pixellation here is your phone waiting to download the higher-res vector tile. While it waits for the higher-res tile it draws a bitmap representation of the lower-res tile "above" it.
They're not infinitely vectors. They're still tiles. If they were to use the zoomed in tile, when zoomed out, even with vectors, you'd get something unrecognizable.
It's the same reason that fonts and icons are brought up when people espouse the "vectors will save everything"! They do a lot of nice things but for something like Google Maps, I can't imagine how they'd implement "true vectors" in a practical phone-applicable way.
I don't see these blurred pixels on my phone, but note that this kind of rendering can also happen with a vector based map: The application has to convert the vector information to a bitmap anyway, for a given zoom level. When zooming in, it is possible that the app shows a zoomed-in version of this bitmap while it is generating a new one in the background.
By the way, it is not necessary to answer every single comment with a link to your screenshot. It is annoying to see the same thing repeated 5 times when reading the thread.
Same version here though the UI looks very different. I can actually reproduce what you describe but only at low zoom levels, which makes sense: the temporary display of a bitmap at the wrong zoom level is more apparent when the phone needs more time to render a lot of vector data (there is less data to render when zoomed-in).
Well, for starters, you're not using an iPhone and that's not what the Google Maps app for iOS looks like.
Regardless, your screenshot shows no evidence that the maps aren't vector based. You simply don't have the high-resolution data for that area and Google's UI is showing that to you by burring it. Apple Maps doesn't blur, it just doesn't show you any details. I like knowing that there is information I am missing, the blur is handy.
Curiously, I wonder what they do then because they definitely have the vector data in the backend. Google Maps for Android has been vector based for 1.5 to 2 years now.
I'm using google maps for android. When I zoom in, I can clearly see the pixelation of the tiles before the new tiles load. The google play store doesn't show any updates for the app. Where are you getting your information?
I have this on an old HTC phone. The UI is totally different, I think they have different layout controls for the "newness" of the phone. Having said that, it's possible the vector data is still being used, but renders to bitmap when zooming for some reason. I can't recall this happening on my S2 though (dead now, can't test)
But we're talking about the new Google Maps app for iOS, which is not the same as Google Maps for Android (its a newer ground-up design with different features.)
The new app is vector based and has turn by turn directions.
Google refused Apple access to both of those features in the original "Maps" app (in iOS <= 5), but they conveniently included them in their new Google Maps app. :)
Google refused to allow Apple access because Apple was unwilling to allow more Google branding and Latitude support. It was a breakdown in negotiations, not either side being selfish.
This comment is clearly unbiased (and correct), which makes it all the more annoying that your comment (elsewhere in this thread) about Google's early troubles with search in their own app store has been being voted down.
It's definitely vector-based. What you're seeing is that the vector tile gets rendered to a bitmap for display. If you zoom in quickly, rather than re-render the bitmap over and over, it just scales the pre-rendered bitmap. When the new zoomed-in tile loads, then it re-renders that tile.
Also, even though it's vector-based, there's still different tiles for different zoom levels. For example, with different levels of detail.
