I went to Mexico for a road trip over thanksgiving with my WM10 phone and offline maps of California and Mexico and the results are below:
Maps:
Car navigation worked very well. But the new "directions" screen is confusing, I accidentally ending up closing the apps on numerous occasions from some of the screens. I also liked the old method where you could scroll to the next instruction and it would snap to that instruction and the maps would move along with it, it is no longer possible to do that. They take away a mature product, Here, and replace it with a brand new UI that isn't that good. Zooming in/out of maps is impossible if you are driving and half of the screen is taken up with nonsense info from the directions, pinch zoom isn't great if you f'in only have one usable hand, bring the zoom buttons back, like Here. I also could not get my favorites from Here maps, of which i have hundreds. The routes choosen were generally very good. Accuracy of the maps is good.
Maps Favorites:
I added a few favorites as i was driving around, they had mysteriously disappeared by the next morning.
Cross Device:
I shared a bunch of places that i wanted to vising using my Win10 laptop from Maps to OneNote for office 2010, and I couldn't find them in Mexico! Big time problem. Sure this was an oversight on my part, but i expected this shiz to just work. I need to find out what happened to these.
Offline Music:
Bluetooth music worked pretty good and the battery life was really superb. I did find a bug, when Cortana announces a text over bluetooth it kills the playlist and/or doesn't turn the music back on.
Search results:
Microsoft adds tons of results to their Maps search (from other sources such as yelp, etc) which aren't available offline. This was a big disappointment, when not known and in the middle of nowhere. The list of results shrinks considerably compared to when online. I wonder how google maps does with search result on their new offline feature.
A weak wi-fi signal drained my battery overnight.
Translate: even bigger disappointment offline, it does a great job online, but offline it just sucks. For example Empana, shows up online, but not offline. It still cant find the word Decantos or decanto, cuz its missing a space in between. The biggest challenge of trying to translate another language is deciphering and typing what is spoken. Translate offline is a just a crappy dictionary. I do love the new interface.
Maps:
Car navigation worked very well. But the new "directions" screen is confusing, I accidentally ending up closing the apps on numerous occasions from some of the screens. I also liked the old method where you could scroll to the next instruction and it would snap to that instruction and the maps would move along with it, it is no longer possible to do that. They take away a mature product, Here, and replace it with a brand new UI that isn't that good. Zooming in/out of maps is impossible if you are driving and half of the screen is taken up with nonsense info from the directions, pinch zoom isn't great if you f'in only have one usable hand, bring the zoom buttons back, like Here. I also could not get my favorites from Here maps, of which i have hundreds. The routes choosen were generally very good. Accuracy of the maps is good.
Maps Favorites:
I added a few favorites as i was driving around, they had mysteriously disappeared by the next morning.
Cross Device:
I shared a bunch of places that i wanted to vising using my Win10 laptop from Maps to OneNote for office 2010, and I couldn't find them in Mexico! Big time problem. Sure this was an oversight on my part, but i expected this shiz to just work. I need to find out what happened to these.
Offline Music:
Bluetooth music worked pretty good and the battery life was really superb. I did find a bug, when Cortana announces a text over bluetooth it kills the playlist and/or doesn't turn the music back on.
Search results:
Microsoft adds tons of results to their Maps search (from other sources such as yelp, etc) which aren't available offline. This was a big disappointment, when not known and in the middle of nowhere. The list of results shrinks considerably compared to when online. I wonder how google maps does with search result on their new offline feature.
A weak wi-fi signal drained my battery overnight.
Translate: even bigger disappointment offline, it does a great job online, but offline it just sucks. For example Empana, shows up online, but not offline. It still cant find the word Decantos or decanto, cuz its missing a space in between. The biggest challenge of trying to translate another language is deciphering and typing what is spoken. Translate offline is a just a crappy dictionary. I do love the new interface.
Last edited: