[OSM-talk] Still interest in an Android POI collector?

Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmunro at arjam.net
Fri Mar 5 13:03:47 GMT 2010


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Liz wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Feb 2010, Patrick Weber wrote:
>> I tried Navit on Android yesterday, at least on my phone (HTC Magic) it 
>> was unusable, the map didnt update properly or follow my movements, and 
>> crashed a few times. I also could not find out how to actually set a 
>> route .... 

I've just been playing with Navit the last couple of days, and it's the
only Android OSM app I've seen so far that I would recommend to other
people.

The user interface needs some work, but once I got it to work on my G1,
it is worth it.

> On the Freerunner I run Navit, but I changed the xml file to use the menu 
> style "gtk".
> Using the "internal display" every time you touch the screen because the 
> backlight has gone off something happens on the program so strange things 
> happen when you least want them to.

I wake the screen using the menu key, but you're right, it needs to
disable the screen sleeping.

> It can choose and navigate a route of about 200km but past that distance I 
> have troubles even with a netbook processor.

It probably needs to use A-star rather than a simple Dijkstra's algorithm.

I think that Navit is the right approach to mapping - it doesn't use map
tiles, it renders vectors on demand. It does routing etc. and doesn't
need an internet connection.

There's a few quick improvements that could be made:

* Menu layout needs work - I need a button that says "Navigate to" or
"Go to" on the first page, that leads to a search. I can't find an
option to delete bookmarks, etc. Also, the menus need to be more android
native in feel, rather than strange custom menus.
* Direction instructions need a bit of tweaking e.g. it says:
  "Turn left into a four thousand one hundred and forty four"
 where it should say:
  "Turn left into the A four one four four"
* Searching needs work (it relies on a strict hierarchy defined by is_in
tags & doesn't do postcodes) - it could have an option to fall back to
the internet nominatim for searching as this is only a tiny amount of
bandwidth & would be a quick win.
* Speed sensitive auto-zoom would be nice
* The 3d view has a wierd perspective that doesn't really work - it
probably needs to be landscape-only, and tilted much further.

POI, track, and photo collection would be useful additional features,
along with something to highlight in the directions where there is a
FIXME or OSMbug entry nearby on the map.

I think that integrating these features into Navit (perhaps as plugins),
rather than having a separate app would be of much greater benefit.

Robert (Jamie) Munro
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