Below is a guest post by Android developer Nicholas Grimlach AKA PlusMinus
Android finally has a fully audible realtime turn-by-turn Navigation System – called AndNav2.
Its just a public Alpha, but due to the experience gained with AndNav1 on the Android Market it is already in a pretty mature state.
Moreover AndNav2 is free. No monthly costs, no map-pack-upgrades, never! To keep it free the project is contigent on voluntary donations throughout the community – and advertising right inside AndNav2.
AndNav2 supports not only Contacts/POI/Address-Search and many more, but even the recently released free Text2Speech library by Charles L. Chen which will give you fully audible turn-by-turn directions in the style of “In 500 meters turn right into king street”.
Unlike AndNav1, AndNav2 is based on OpenStreetMap-Data, which is a community-based collaborative project for mapping, as what Wikipedia is for common knowledge.
The only drawback of AndNav2 is that it currently is only available for the following countries:
- United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, France, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, Italy & Austria
The reason why i.e. the U.S. is not yet covered is due the lack of a powerful enough server although on andnav.org one can find a fundraising-thermometer which could fund a server strong enough for the U.S.
8 comments… read them below or add one
My only problem with the donation method is that you might start selling the product at a later date and my donations will not be counted. If you promise to count donations as part of the payment for any future sales I’ll donate what I think the product is worth.
Hi Roy,
I can understand how you feel.
I 100% want to AndNav2 to be free forever! Its the goal I am absolutely working towards!
Be _sure_, that IF(!) it ever might cost something, just contact me and you’ll get a free version.
Best Regards,
Nicolas
Great concept. I don’t think it should be free. While people like me are sitting home watching tv, this guy was working to develop such and application that would probably put a lot of GPS providers to shame (not to mention take from their wallets).
Your smartest move, my friend is to patent this and sell the software to HTC or google, and/or any communications company interested. If that doesn’t work, sell it for $10-$20 dollars per license on android market (when the purchasing becomes available). As far as asking for donations, the donation are a contribution to developing something great. As a ‘thank you’ to your contributors (for whom you’ll probably have a list you should save), kick back their contribution, plus reasonable thank you gift/s. Just my 2cents.
Except that this program is community based. You dont want to charge people for something they must help to create, or you'll slow down your traffic and thats the entire point of a community-built resource.
I think the best way to charge for an app like this is to take people halfway there and then have them pay a dollar if they want to go the rest of the way :). I would pay just for the chutzpah.
what about an iPhone 3G version on Cydia?
i know it’s more difficult that it sounds but if you could add a feature that would search for gas prices by unleaded, premium ect. That would be great. But im still waiting for this app to be available in the U.S
p.s Great app!!!!!!!
Based on the video your app looks excellent. Being from Canada my question is could you not access the same map database as Nav4All as they claim to have access to a database for 85 countries around the world? I would like to see your application available here and would be willing to pay a nominal amount.