Thanks for sharing details about Organic Maps…we are definitely interested in Maps applications which are better suited for the needs of /e/OS users.
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I installed Organic maps over the weekend. Do the maps always have to be downloaded in full? Not just the small part of the section where I am right now?
Organic Maps has GPS-Signal, while a lot of other apps like Sygic, Magic Earth, SAT24, Flightradar24 don’t on my Redmi Note 7.
Organic Maps does NOT have traffic information, so no re-routing in case of traffic jams.
IMHO this is a key feature regarding navigation apps.
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I would love to see the day when open source map app is ready to be default. With that said, let’s be honest here. Organic Maps has a long way to go until at the level of Magic Earth.
- Currently when searching address, app offers the streat from your city if it founds one, then to close cities, bit farther away, similarly named streets… if you write like streename 123, cityname you get first suggestion to the center of that city, nowhere near to that street. Then you have similarly named streets, then similarly named cities and finally at bottom of list the one you searched for.
If the street is at same city and you can just type streetname 123, you can select that suggestion from top, but map view shows whole street as destination. Only after you tap “set as destination / endpoint” you will see destination actually is located at that 123, not number but not whole street.
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Route view. It differs from generally used defaults by other map apps. I think default should be like it usually is, but with option to change. More specifically usually route view is shown as north to up of screen, then after starting to drive it usually changes to driving direction to top. With Organic Maps first route is shown differently which sometimes causes “where the heck does it guide me to?”, sure you can tap compass to get north up but still.
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No optional routes with Organic Maps
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No human speach as voice
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No information about which bus leaves at bustop, when and locations it goes to. This information is shared as open data in Finland and it’s handy with Magic Earth.
Those are just some things which came up to mind by quickly thinking. I have no doubt that in best case even all of those issues can be ironed out, but I wouldn’t wish Organic Maps as a default map app atleast until first 3 listed here are fixed. Sure there’s still a long issue list at github too (have also mentioned some of these there)
Anyway in the end I do hope Organic Maps will get improvements and after that possibly picked up as default map app.
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I think the progress in development also depends on us end users. Are we willing to support open source development financially ? (or do we all expect these apps to appear from nowhere). I think what we need is a good system to pay for open source apps, maybe directly integrated in the app store. Or paying /e/ foundation more money, so they will be able to redirect such sources to developers of crucial apps.
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+1 for replacing magicmap with organicmap.app maybe we can move forward on this ?
The solution is opensource and include privacy + we have the dev team already here with us and proactive with the /e/ community for adoption.
Nothing changed regarding a very key point.
https://github.com/orgs/organicmaps/discussions/568
(I don’t use Magic Earth, I don’t care either way.)
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On top of those Magick Earth has built in TTS with really nice voice & wide language support.
With Orcanic Maps (which I do like), user must use TTS in system. At /e/ OS they used to use espeak which for some languages at least does sound awful. /e/ OS changed back to pico tts which sounds better, but supports only limited number of languages.
So usability wise at naviagition usage, Magick Earth is better in general for people.
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I think /e/OS developers can render such discussions obsolete by implementing easy uninstalling of preinstalled Apps. It’s planned for a while already.
Preinstalled Apps can be uninstalled via ADB, but if it instead was as easy as uninstalling user-installed Apps, there would be no real reason anymore to go into much detail about why some App or other should come with /e/OS or not. Everybody could just throw out what they don’t like and install what they want.
Else, one can still choose to ignore preinstalled Apps and just use other Apps anyway.
But of course I understand that nagging feeling that there’s something sitting there not being used, needlessly occupying some form of space or memory or storage or any given resource.
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Planned, and we also made some attempts at getting it to work. Unfortunately, it proved to be too complicated and had to be dropped.
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Ah, too bad. Thanks for the clarification.
Thank you @AnotherElk 
Isn’t choosing a feature, with debatable “keypoint” and privacy concern to render trafficjam over privacy by design and open source a far cry from /e/ values?
To collect Google-dependent users where they are and to offer them something they can immediately use without sacrificing too much functionality they are used to is also an /e/OS value.
/e/OS is a compromise.
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