• Offline maps for ipad. Review of free map services for iPhone and iPad

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    @iLexa, I wonder what merits you would vote for Apple for if you didn’t live in Belarus? Maybe they have better coverage? Interface? Is search more convenient?

    If there had been a void where my country was on the map, I would never have thought that in any other scenario I could have voted for these maps. I would be filled with sacred hatred towards them. Therefore, I find your position extremely surprising.

    @Igemon80, it's very simple. I think one level higher - how it is really organized. And in fact, it turns out that our country is just a bottom with politics, bureaucracy, dictatorship and almost terrania, so even the same Google put it quite recently (around the end of last year), but detailed it at the beginning of this year. And all the time since 2007, I saw absolutely the same picture of the main roads of the country and that’s it! Well, because I don’t think and think completely soberly, and I don’t feel sacred hatred, because in their place I would, with a high degree of probability, do exactly the same thing, based on calculations of economic efficiency. And I absolutely understand the map supplier (Apple essentially has nothing to do with it), even all the map suppliers who do not want to put the CIS countries on the map, because it will never pay off for them. On at the moment Only Navitel benefits from this, this is their market, they are working on it, updating maps and improving the software.

    More specifics, their coverage suits me quite well and for me they are absolutely usable, it’s just that first of all they ask me to go to the Moscow Ring Road, and from there they lead to Europe. The interface is clear to me and suits me (unlike Google maps, I still haven’t figured out what I need to press for it to start leading me and telling me where to turn. Search... hmm... Google is better, but not the previous built-in application, but the current one.

    @iLexa, okay. Thanks for the detailed answer!

    I’m also not at all a hypocrite. It's all about personal convenience. When the almost perfectly covered Ukraine in Google maps is replaced by extremely weak coverage from Apple, this is, to put it mildly, upsetting. And if you dig deeper and evaluate the economic aspect from the point of view of the manufacturer, an even sadder picture emerges. Besides the fact that everything is bad now, there are also no prospects for improvement in the near future. It is clear that Apple will first finish the map of the United States, then work on Western Europe, and get to Ukraine and Belarus when we are already babysitting our grandchildren.

    Therefore, I consider all your arguments (certainly correct) as another reason to treat Apple cards negatively, and not try to justify them.

    @Igemon80, you can also understand, but I just know what I’m comparing it to, because I was in NYC in July and I terribly missed the functionality that is now in the new maps. For the US, I still think they're chic. And I’m glad that there will be no more Google, otherwise it’s not fun to type in Guitar Store, then walk 10 blocks on foot and find out that you came to an ordinary residential building in which there is nothing and NEVER was. Well, no one canceled cutting back either.
    But the situation can easily change for the better, Apple has a ton of money, they may well invest in the development of cards, since they launched them raw, so I think by the end of next year all the largest markets will be satisfied, therefore in another year they will think about smaller markets.

    By the way, another thought, again Apple is the engine of progress, if they had not drunk Google maps, their application might not have seen the light of day, and we would not be at the same level of functionality and implementation as we are now. So we got it anyway good app from Google, which they will support and cut, the situation is the same as with YouTube.

    When going on a trip, do not forget to take your navigator with you. Although, if you are happy iPad owner, you can use an inline element. The display of tablets is better than that of navigators. And the GPS connection is more stable.

    It is advisable that the iOS gadget have offline maps, because far from cities there is often no network.

    There are several programs for these purposes. Among them are paid and freely distributed. The cost of the most expensive application is about 12,000 rubles.

    In this review we will look at the most popular options navigation programs for Apple tablets.

    Google Maps- one of the most common products. It can be used both with the network turned on and without it. Perhaps the program has only one competitor - similar software from Yandex.

    The main advantage of Google apps is that it is free. And if not so long ago it was possible to work with it only if there was a network, today geographic data can be downloaded into the tablet’s memory.

    Thanks to offline access, the user can find out without the Internet where he is currently located and how to get to a certain point on the ground. Therefore there is nothing surprising. That travel lovers actively use this software.

    Another one of the most favorite programs among users is Shturmann. True, it's paid. For owners of Android devices it has been available for a long time, and in App Store appeared quite recently. Previously, this company producing for iPad navigator offline type, was engaged in the production of similar products for cars.

    But the most important thing is that Shturmann is a navigator without the Internet for any iPad model. The software is downloaded directly to the device and used without a network. But keep in mind that the cards are paid. For a package for one Russia, the developer asks about 200 rubles. If the coverage also includes Ukraine and Finland, you will have to pay 800 rubles.

    The Shturmann window is spectacular and intuitive. By the way, the design was developed by the famous studio of Artemy Lebedev. The symbols on the main display are interactive. This allows you, if there is a network, to immediately receive information about traffic jams, lay out routes, and search for service points.

    Shturmann also offers users:

    • guide to the sights of the capital;
    • parking map;
    • information on the cost of gasoline;
    • tow truck call service.

    Sygic is another one paid product, loved by many users. Its feature is a huge number of maps across Europe and southeast Asia. An option that works without a network can be purchased for our country for 2,500 rubles. The most important thing is that it is able to establish communication with GPS satellites and routes 100% right paths for cars and pedestrians.

    If you have access to the network, you can resort to additional services:

    • report an accident;
    • order a tow truck;
    • find service points.

    Note that the cards paid versions Navigation software more accurately displays house numbers, all passageways between buildings and country roads.

    All paid programs also show places of recreation and services, or simply something unusual. We can say with confidence that our little money they are standing.


    The best navigation software

    Next, we will analyze the characteristics of worthy programs, which may not be super popular for various reasons. Users may not be aware of many of them. Or you were too lazy to study the functionality of each application in detail in order to choose for yourself best option. If you consider yourself one of these, carefully read the information below.

    Yandex Navigator

    This software is distributed by the company of the same name for free. In Russia and Ukraine it is one of the most beloved by users.

    Using the program, the user can prepare for a turn or find out the remaining time to the destination. The main thing is to listen carefully to Oksana or Dima (depending on which commentator you choose).

    You can also learn about different interesting places like restaurants, hotels and just unusual places. Messages about traffic jams, accidents, and weather changes are also provided.

    If there is a network, you can add other markers and messages for drivers to the current map. It is very easy to build a path path. The window is intuitive, and when you enter address characters, hints pop up.

    A significant drawback of the software is that many functions are not available without a network. The program does not interact with maps downloaded to the iOS device’s memory. The user can only save a piece of an element with routed paths to the cache. But changing the route or creating a new one without a network will not work.

    The application also does not warn about the need to limit speeds, does not show traffic lanes and is not able to distinguish a neglected dirt road from a motorway.

    Navitel

    A good product for traveling around our country and the CIS. Suitable for traveling around Europe too. Free use available for a week.

    As for Russia. Paths to more than 30,000 cities are available. The POI database is constantly expanding. This is a list of attractions, cafes, hotels, train stations.

    The main feature of the program is the ability to install the user’s own cards. And this also applies to SpeedCam data. All this means that the network is basically not needed. Paths can only be laid using downloaded maps. And the user’s commands are executed by the application instantly.

    And if you have an Internet connection, even better. Then get completely free information about the weather and traffic jams.

    With full automatic mode, you can switch day and night modes and navigation to the entrance.


    City Guide

    A free product for tablets. Works even without a network. You can download OSM maps and record the track to your destination.

    However, connecting to the network will provide many benefits:

    • access to the traffic jam service (information about their availability, movement and movement);
    • daily updates on the situation on the road (information about repairs, road closures, etc.);
    • search for changing POIs;
    • display of radars and traffic police cameras.

    The main advantage of this product is its speed of response. In less than a minute, it establishes communications with satellites, downloads maps, and lays out tracks in seconds. It also won’t take much time to pave the way again.

    The software is very stable and there are no freezes. This is evidenced by numerous user reviews on the forums. The program does not crash and does not use outdated information.

    Living in a more or less large populated area, it is very difficult to do without navigation tools. What can we say if you live in a metropolis. That's why you should definitely have one of the navigation apps for your iPhone on hand.

    One of the first navigators for smartphones to implement offline maps, so you don’t have to go to the Internet to find point B. But 2GIS is not easy mobile cards, it is also an extremely informative reference book, comparable to the Yellow Pages. Find a nearby place to eat? No problem. Moreover, if you want to book a table, in 2GIS you will find out not only the address, but also the opening hours, as well as contact information.

    The peculiarity of the application is that the first time you launch it, you will in any case need to download offline maps for your city, that is, 2GIS simply does not work online. When building a route, 2GIS takes into account how you will get there: on foot, by car public transport, taxi or personal car. For each case, one or more shortest possible routes will be selected.

    Yandex.Maps

    And if 2GIS allowed you to work with offline maps from the very beginning, then in Yandex.Maps this opportunity appeared quite recently. But this does not make the application worse, since thanks to the ability to work online we get a lot useful information. For example, if you are moving on ground transport, it is important to know the current condition of the roads. The application will show the level of traffic congestion on your route and, if necessary, select a route to avoid traffic jams.

    As in the case of 2GIS, the route is formed based on how you plan to get there. Moreover, if you want to take a taxi, you can immediately see the cost of the trip from the application, and also call Yandex.Taxi literally in one click. And when getting to your destination for the first time, you will certainly be pleased with the opportunity to virtually walk through the city streets using the function "Augmented Reality".

    Yandex.Navigator

    If Yandex.Maps is a universal application for creating any type of routes, searching for organizations, viewing their operating hours and contact information, then Yandex.Navigator is indispensable assistant for motorists. Arrive at your destination as quickly as possible optimal route It’s not difficult - all you have to do is follow the prompts on the navigator maps. And so that you don’t miss the right turn, the auto-informer will tell you in advance where you should go.

    The capabilities of Yandex.Navigator can be listed for a very long time, here are just the main ones: speed control (you can set your own parameters), notification of speed cameras, display of traffic jam levels, offline work, "Talkers", where drivers can share information about road conditions in specific areas. A nice bonus there will be different voices for the informant, for example, recently users became available opportunity hear tips from Darth Vader, Optimus Prime, Master Yoda and many other famous characters. If you have a car, then this navigator must be installed.

    Navitel Navigator

    There's another one in line car navigator for iPhone. If you are an experienced motorist, then you have probably heard about such a well-known company as Navitel, whose maps were once installed on almost every navigator. If we talk about the application for the iPhone, here the developers pay attention to the interface at the last moment, which cannot be said about the functionality.

    For example, the most significant advantage of Navitel is its coverage area: if you are an avid traveler, you will be pleased with the fact that it works great throughout Europe, Asia and America, and the navigator operates offline (but you should take into account the impressive weight many cards). Among other possibilities it is worth highlighting convenient search important organizations, displaying traffic levels, providing detailed weather forecasts, speed control, and searching for and adding friends.

    Google Maps

    One of the most significant services Google are Cards. If previously the Google application was much inferior to the Yandex solution (largely due to the low detail of the maps even in large cities), now they are approximately equal, but Google has several notable options that its competitor does not have.

    For example, in the course of a long using Google Maps, you will probably be interested in viewing the places you have visited. If you need your loved ones to know where you are at the moment, activate the geodata transfer function. No internet access? No problem! Just download offline maps first and use them at any time, wherever you are.

    MAPS.ME

    An indispensable app for travelers. When you decide to visit a new country, do not forget to download the region you need in order to use MAPS.ME without access to the Internet.

    Among the main features of MAPS.ME, we should highlight the selection of entertainment in the selected region, the formation of routes (unlike other mapping applications for the iPhone, there is the ability to create bicycle routes), a convenient search for establishments by category, instant saving of places, sending the current location to friends and much more. other.

    Each of the presented iPhone applications has detailed and constantly updated maps, but at the same time, they are very different, having their own unique capabilities. We hope that with our help you were able to find the ideal offline cards for yourself.

    In the navigation category App store Store contains a very wide range of applications. There are highly specialized auto trekkers and programs for sea trips, and even for pilots there are several applications. But there is general tasks that he regularly encounters large number iPhone users. Let's try to collect the most relevant programs for such cases...

    Simple maps for iPhone

    Not yet native app Apple's Maps doesn't work very well in our latitudes.

    It is replaced by two popular programs:



    Offline maps for iPhone

    The above Yandex programs Maps and Google Maps support the ability to create offline maps with the ability to use them without the Internet. This is described in detail at the end of the article. But it is not always possible to do this. So, Yandex has a very limited set of maps, and not everyone will mess with Google’s cache. Therefore, there are specialized applications that greatly facilitate this work.

    There is also a service that is gaining popularity.



    Car navigators for iPhone


    Maps guides


    You can make your guide this way.

    If you have created your own tourist route, then you can transfer it to your smartphone like this.

    Offline maps Yandex and Google

    Yandex Maps program

    IN latest versions The program now has the ability to save city maps in the phone’s memory, i.e. Now you can work with the card without connecting to mobile network or the Internet. This significantly speeds up working with the application and will also save traffic for those who are not subscribers of Megafon, Beeline or Kyivstar.

    Cities whose maps can be downloaded for offline viewing:
    Angasrk, Artem, Barnaul, Belgorod, Berdyansk, Veliky Ustyug, Volzhsky, Vyazniki, Glazov, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Yekaterinburg, Zaporozhye, Yoshkar-Ola, Izhevsk, Ilyichevsk, Kazan, Kamyshin, Kemerovo, Kiev, Kramatorsk-Slavyansk, Krasnoarmeysk, Krasnoyarsk , Crimea, Kurgan, Leningrad region, Lvov, Magnitogorsk, Melitopol, Minsk, Moscow, Moscow region, Nezhin, Nizhnevartovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novokuznetsk, Novosibirsk, Odessa, Orenburg, Prokopyevsk, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, St. Petersburg, Sarapul, Saratov, Sumy, Surgut, Tambov, Tomsk, Uglich, Ulyanovsk, Usolye-Sibirskoye, Ussuriysk, Ufa, Kharkov, Cherepanovo, Chita.

    There is also the opportunity to make maps of the desired area yourself.

    Maps program Google map

    Instructions on how to make google map work on iPhone without using the Internet.

    Theory.

    When you start the program, the necessary map fragments are loaded from the network themselves, using the one available at that moment wifi method or gprs. The loaded areas of the map form a so-called cache, a temporary file. This cache is used for quickly redrawing the screen and in the event of no connection with the server, i.e. for working offline.

    This cache file is called MapTiles.sqlitedb and is a set of square tiles. Each level of detail has its own set. Fragments are not scaled. Likewise, satellite photography and a hybrid, each have their own independent set of fragments.

    It would seem that if you look at the desired part of the map once, you can refer to it constantly. However, the program is designed in such a way that when the cache reaches a certain size, old areas of the map begin to be erased to free up space for new data, and it is not possible to assemble a full-fledged map in this way.

    To get around this problem, you need to set a ban on overwriting the cached map by first loading the desired area of ​​the terrain into your phone.

    One more feature. With the change of firmware, the principle of card caching also changed. For iPad/iPhone4 fragments are used - 256x256 pixels, for iPhone 3GS/3G with firmware 2.2 - 128x128 pixels, for older firmware 64x64 pixels. In addition, the cache in different versions firmware is located in different places file system phone. Therefore, cards from old firmware do not fit the new ones; they need to be converted.

    The map itself consists of 3 files:

    • map in the form of fragments - MapTiles.sqlitedb
    • bookmark file - Bookmarks.plist(street names and pins you placed)
    • launch coordinates - com.apple.Maps.plist

    All 3 files are independent of each other. The main one is MapTiles.sqlitedb, the rest can be downloaded from different sources or may be missing altogether.

    To install a ready-made card you will need:

    • 1. Phone passed Jailbreak
    • 2. File manager for iPhone with the ability to change file permissions (I recommend iFile from Cydia)
    • 3. The cards themselves are for your firmware version. You can download them on torrents.

    By using file manager you need to upload the map files to the appropriate folders on your phone

    For firmware 4.x.x.

    • MapTiles.sqlitedb - private\var\mobile\Library\Caches\Maps\MapTiles\.
    • Bookmarks.plist - private\var\mobile\Library\Maps\.

    Set folder permissions:

    • private\var\mobile\Library\Caches\Maps\MapTiles\

    Set file permissions:

    • private\var\mobile\Library\Caches\Maps\MapTiles\MapTiles.sqlitedb remove the "Record" option for the user.

    After installing the card, you need to reboot the phone.

    If you want to make maps for iPhone yourself you will need

    1. Program SAS Planet, to create a map file.
    2. Converter Mapv4v5Converter.
    3. If you want to use multiple cards on your iPhone, then Cydia has free program iphone offline maps which switches between them on demand.

    List of maps for iPhone 4 firmware 4.x.x. :

    • Moscow - 659 Mb.
    • St. Petersburg - 614 Mb.
    • Kharkov - 249 Mb

    Summer is already coming to an end, but many still have vacations ahead, for which many will go to the sea or travel around the world. Internet abroad is not very cheap, and it is very easy to get lost in an unfamiliar city, especially if the population does not speak English and Russian. A team of talented developers took care of people who value their money and want to significantly save on Internet traffic.

    The Maps.me project was originally called MapsWithMe and was created several years ago. The team had to deal with many difficult tasks that were necessary to make the cards work smoothly, stably and without the Internet. First of all, the application was intended to save traffic when traveling, but now you can use it even while in your hometown.

    The application offers maps of the whole world, which can be downloaded by individual regions or countries. For example, a map of Moscow weighs 215 MB, a map of Italy 496 MB, and a map of Turkey only 75 MB. The maps are designed in the form of a diagram that displays all the shops, services, food, theaters, hotels, libraries, supermarkets, shopping centers and much more.

    The application has a search presence that will indicate all selected objects with a green circle. This is very convenient if, for example, you are looking for a hotel on a large map. This program arguably contains some of the most informative and detailed maps of the world.

    All that is needed for comfortable work is the presence of a GPS module in the device. This module is built into all iPhones, but the iPad only has it on board if the iPad supports a SIM card. I'm going to an unfamiliar country, I need to download the necessary map in advance and turn on this one GPS module and you can go.

    The application has practically no settings; you can select units of measurement, turn on or off the scale buttons and collect Internet statistics. There are no traffic jams in the application, but do not forget that, first of all, this is a travel application and it works completely without the Internet, which neither Google Maps nor Yandex Maps can boast of.

    The Maps.me team has a lot of ideas to improve their own maps, but to implement new and convenient functions it takes a lot of time. The application is regularly updated, and its functionality expands every month. All updates, including redesign for iOS 7, have been and will be available without additional payment, like many applications in the App Store. In addition to iOS, the application is also available on Android.

    The mapping program has Lite and Pro version. The differences are that in the Lite version only one map of any country is available for download, there is no search for objects, the inability to add places to bookmarks, rotate the map and use the autofollow mode. The cost of the application is fully justified by its functionality, which has no analogues in all markets around the world. The program is universal and works on iPhone and iPad at no additional cost.

    Download MAPS.ME Lite for iOS free from [

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