Sat Nav on my Android, good or bad idea?

[Tyre Smoke]

I have a Sony Xperia Z which is great but occasionally need to use a Sat Nav, but not enough to warrant buying one. My phone is always with me and therefore convenient.

I have used Google Maps before, which is okay as long as you are in a good signal area - not great in deepest darkest Devon and am currently coming to the end of a free month's trial of Wisepilot which I quite like. The smart thinking though seems be for CoPilot, which at £30 for Western Europe seems a bit steep, but does that include updates for life, or is there more to pay every so often? I like the idea of CoPilot not using your data allowance etc, which is good for foreign travel but I'm not exactly criss crossing Europe every week.

So, any advice?

[Snowboy]

I just use the standard android satnav.
So long as the phones plugged in it works well, and I've never had a problem with data.

[Tyre Smoke]

Which is Google Maps and rubbish in Devon. Unless you are in a biggish town or one of the cities, it's 2G everywhere. The data thing doesn't particularly concern me, because of the relative infrequency of use.

[snapdragon69]

I only used Android for a few months, but I remember there was an option in the google maps to save the map to cache while at home on wifi - “Make this map area available offline” - try googling that phrase if you can't find it. This was on a SAMSUNG Galaxy S4 last quarter of 2013.

[Pit Pony]

I use FreeNav on a Samsung Galaxy Ace, to travel all over the UK, but I do check my route before I leave and ensure I have an old fashioned map book in the boot, because it has a few mistakes, such as believing that the A55 from the Easy side of the Conway river to Llanfairfechen does not exist, and it attempts to take a detour via Snowdonia.

[devnull]

Two options from Major Vendors - TomTom and CoPilot.

IMHO tomtom does a better job all round - good detail maps, and excellent Traffic HD .

Co Pilot is also very good, however in using it numerous times, it tends to do some batst crazy things with regards to the way it deals with traffic jams. It has caught me out a few times. Even the 2006 Nav in my mercedes (with the latest maps) does a better job.

[Apache]

google maps is just fine and works well on my Sammy

[Jam Spavlin]

Mapfactor navigator is the best one I've found free so far. Reqires no data on the move unlike Google maps.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com....

[Tyre Smoke]

Oooh! might give that a go.

Trouble with pre-loading maps, is often I don't know where I need to go until I have the person in my car.

[Shaoxter]

Tyre Smoke said:

Trouble with pre-loading maps, is often I don't know where I need to go until I have the person in my car.

I have the whole of Greater London cached on my phone and that only takes up about 100MB. Just zoom out and cache a larger area.

£30 for a satnav app is not steep considering a dedicated satnav costs over £100 and a satnav option on a car is thousands.

[rotarymazda]

I use the free copilot. See how you get on with that before parting with your pennies.

The whole UK map is downloaded so no live feed required.

[Tyre Smoke]

Will do, MapFactor being a pain to download.

[Greendubber]

You could also try NavFree, download it all via wifi and you dont need to worry about signal. Had it on my S4 for 12 months and its never let me diwn.

[Tyre Smoke]

Gave up with Mapfactor, wouldn't load the maps. Using the free version of CoPilot at the moment, seems to be all I need and more.

[rs990]

Should you go for TomTom, wait for a sale. They regularly sell the app for a 40% discount, and the HD traffic subscription (in app purchase) is usually reduced in price at the same time.

[lescombes]

I use Co Pilot Europe... fantastic all round choice of routes for the same destination... never been less than spot on in the UK and overseas... All maps loaded on the phone so no data charges unless using the navteq traffic, which I do in the UK but opt out in the EU as I'm on holiday so sod the traffic..lol

[lescombes]

My neighbour has just done a trip from Cambridge to Trier using Copilot Europe... no probs at all..took him to the U.S air base he needed to go to... worth having...

[bozzy101]

I use Google maps and find it fantastic.

Waze is also very good and free to download from Google play.

[feef]

I use Sygic on my iPhone but they do an Android version. It's got all the features you'd need and want. Recently added some touches like a fuel-stop button which will find the closest fuel station on your route, not just the closest one (which could be 100m away but the other side of the motorway). Maps are stored on the device so no data required, but with a data connection, you get traffic updates and autorecalculation to avoid jams and whatnot.

[SonicShadow]

Sygic is by far the best 'offline' GPS / mapping application for Android.