The Android mobile operating system is graduating soon to 2.0 status, and Google gave it a pretty nice present to celebrate: a free turn-by-turn navigation app called “Google Maps Navigation.” It’ll run on Android 2.0 phones with GPS, and it’ll use the phone’s cellular Internet connection to get live map information.There’s a wide range of quality out there when it comes to smartphone nav apps, but the features Google mentions make its program sound like one of the better ones. There’s speech-activated location search, live traffic data with alternate routing, and integration with Street View so you can get an actual photo of what your destination looks like from the ground level.It’ll take some testing and comparison work, but Google Maps Navigation could be on par with the kind of nav apps that sell for as much as US$100 on the iPhone. In fact, the day Google made its announcement, TomTom’s and Garmin’s stocks tanked, perhaps on fears that smartphone navigation apps are going to overtake dedicated dash-mounted devices and that Google is going to suck competitors dry by making its app free, perhaps with some advertising thrown in.But that stance presumes that Google Maps Navigation is going to be… Read full this story
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