OpenStreetMap

Need help: which osm apps to recommend?

Posted by Chaos99 on 7 November 2011 in English.

Hi,
I'm giving a talk about OSM in the next days and I'm trying to find mobile apps to recommend to general OSM users (not (yet) mappers).

I'm personally using an Android phone and my pick is Locus, but even this one might not be the best. Unfortunately I can't go with 'most popular' app, as those will get / are getting blocked now due to heavy tile server usage.

So I would really like to know what YOU think is the best app for Android/iOS/WinMobile. Do you know of any apps that behave better, like using an own tile server or do local rendering? But beginner friendly usage is a must! (And Geocaching features a big plus.)

Knock yourself out in the comments. That's a very pretty 'please' here.
Thanks in advance!

Chaos

PS: Yes, I know of the excellent lists of apps in the wiki. They just don't do recommendations.

Discussion

Comment from liftarn on 7 November 2011 at 10:07

My favourite is MapDroyd as you can download the maps in advance (instead of just caching). The maps are also vectors instead of bitmaps so they can turn.

Comment from Niels Elgaard Larsen on 7 November 2011 at 14:40

Navit (ZANavit) is good.

Comment from Sanderd17 on 7 November 2011 at 16:48

OsmAnd is very good (you do want the donation version or the nightly, not the free one in the market).

Navit is a bit more geeky (with an XML config file), but a lot more configurable.

Navit is purely offline, while OsmAnd combines offline and online features.

Mapdroyd is nothing special if you compare it to the features of Navit and OsmAnd. But NavDroyd is also made by the same persons and is probably good (I did not try it since it's a version you have to pay for).

These are all apps that work on Android and do local rendering.

Comment from Chaos99 on 7 November 2011 at 16:59

Thanks to all of you for your recommendations. I will work those into my talk.

Seems that Android is the OS of choice for most mappers. Well, can't say I'm surprised.
But is there anyone with knowledge about iOS apps?

Comment from Ale_Zena_IT on 7 November 2011 at 21:18

When I was an OSM newbee I began to map using Mappo!
http://www.marcopolci.net/wiki/informatica:progetti:pollicino_en
on a HP Ipaq (WinMobile) and it was very user friendly (offline map).

Comment from Richard on 7 November 2011 at 22:20

OffMaps is very highly regarded for iOS.

Comment from kesler on 8 November 2011 at 11:38

I prefer NavDroyd. Although this App isn't free, but it has a nice 3D navigation feature with turn by turn talking voice. Maps are downloaded as vector and have a small size for a big region like a country. It also has a "Add pin" feature for adding unmapped POI's. MapDroyd is the same with similar interface except 3D navigation.
At second place I like to use Maverick. This App uses bitmaps and consumes huge amount of SD card, but has a nice feature: uploading recorded tracks to www.GPSies.com directly :)

Comment from marscot on 8 November 2011 at 22:54

sports tracker is also great, and using osm

Comment from agsochi on 24 November 2011 at 20:00

Openmaps Pro for iOS, you can add any tags.

Log in to leave a comment