New Zealand

Hiking maps on my android phone

This article might be a bit out of line with my typical posts, bit since I’m heavily depending on it, I thought I’d spread the word.

oruxmaps

For all my outdoor adventures, if hiking, mountainbiking or even skiing, I am using the free application OruxMaps paired with the open source outdoor maps from openAndroMaps.

Screenshot_2014-03-24-11-50-14What do you get? Very detailed outdoor maps for the whole world with GPS positioning, so you’ll always know where you are, enriched with plenty of helpful tools like distance measuring, a compass integrated into the map and many more.
Want to follow an unknown trail that you found on the internet? Load it into OruxMaps, display it on the map,  enable the track following and be notified whenever you get too far away from the waypoints.
Before I started my world trip, I downloaded the maps for all the countries I was going to visit and that’s all the maps I’ll ever need, offline, always available.
I must admit that it takes some time to get it running and to get used to the complex yet complicated interfaces. But once you get along with it, I can promise you that you won’t want to go outdoors without it anymore!

Please give it a go and if you like it and keep using it, remember to donate to both the maps and the app.

Last point: navigation, say for driving instructions. It does it, too, but as far as I could see, it does need internet for it. Therefore I’m using a separate application called Navigator for this matter. It’s not at the same standard as a standalone GPS system like a TomTom or others, but it’s free and it saves you from taking an extra device with you.

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