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Google Maps Releases Its Offline Features

It may seem that the entire planet is connected from your end, but statistics show that roughly 60 percent of the world is without Internet today. And that is a problem if you’re a driver who wants to use a map service to find his way on the road. Google figured it could find a way to offer most of the Google Maps features while the user is either online or offline. And it just went online (pun intended).
Google Maps Releases Its Offline Features 1 photo
Photo: Google
This May, during the 8th annual Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, the IT giant announced its plans to take a further step towards the right path. It previewed the new Google Maps features, but it’s only today that they became available. What this update does is allow the user to download an area of the world and use it even offline. This means that if the service is weak, or the user goes offline, Google Maps will continue to work seamlessly.

“Whereas before you could simply view an area of the map offline, now you can get turn-by-turn driving directions, search for specific destinations, and find useful information about places, like hours of operation, contact information or ratings.”

In a way, you download the new area in advance, so the app keeps showing you the needed information to get around, even if there’s no connectivity. You just search for a city, county or country, for instance, and tap Download on the resulting place sheet, or you go to “Offline Areas” in the Google Maps menu and tap on the “+” button.

The company claims the user doesn’t even need to do anything, as the app will move into offline mode automatically when it recognizes you’re in a location with spotty service or no connectivity at all. Once you get back on track, it will switch back online. And what’s even better, it will only download areas to the device if there’s a Wi-Fi connection to make sure you’re not spending too much on it.
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