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subins2000 | 5 years ago

I use OsmAnd and there are a lot of features. What troubles with Google Maps in India is that every road is considered basically the same and the routes it calculate often tends to be on very bad roads whereas OsmAnd tries to pick the road based on quality/main-roads first then side roads. This is very useful in India where many roads have potholes. Major roads (national, state, district highways) are better maintained than the rest. This distinction between roads are clearly mapped in OSM, at least in Kerala.

GMaps also tries to calculate the very shortest path possible, but this often is a bad idea in India cause the roads won't be that great to go through.

Some of the things I like about OsmAnd: navigation-with-voice, speedbump warnings, sightseeing notifications, trip recording+stats, parking area finder, different profiles (walking, driving, browsing etc.) :- all this available offline :)

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BlueTemplar|5 years ago

This is surprising to me, because AFAIK GMaps tends to calculate the fastest route, rather than the shortest one. But perhaps it just didn't have enough movement data where you tried it ?

subins2000|5 years ago

> It just didn't have enough movement data where you tried it

That maybe the reason, main roads have it, side-roads not so much. GMaps now have offline destination finder, I guess it doesn't even consider the movement data. The dependence on internet service for better route calculation is a bummer for travelling here.

tt433|5 years ago

Any domestic competition?

subins2000|5 years ago

The Kerala state government is doing an initiative to map Kerala in OSM, school-college students volunteer to map many places. It's been almost running for an year now : https://mapathonkeralam.in/

Many people doesn't know about OsmAnd yet, I've been using it full time now. For some places, OSM is more informative than gmaps and vice-versa. The data is increasing day by day, so it's a win-win for every OSM based app here. [OSM was used extensively during Kerala floods 2018 : https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2018_Kerala_Floods,_Indi... which prompted the government to take initiative such as Mapathon Keralam.