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I am preparing a 1-week bicycle trip. We can't use high-traffic roads, so I am preparing a quite complex route on small country roads, using Google Maps.

With my phone saddled on my bicycle, is there a GPS app that will "guide" me using the itinerary I crafted? Turn-by-turn would be ideal, but just writing the itinerary as a map overlay would be better than nothing.

Note: My phone is WiFi only so I will need an application that can cache a lot of maps, like AndNav2 or Maverick. Also, I am stuck with Android 1.5

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  • Which phone are you using?
    – Sparx
    Apr 21, 2011 at 16:15
  • A special kind of HTC Magic I was given at Google Developer Day 2009. It is a very specific model, and I couldn't find any info about whether it is rootable or not.
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Apr 22, 2011 at 1:30
  • That sounds like the Google ION, which they gave away at IO in 2009. It's rootable. I installed CyanogenMod6 on mine and it works fine.
    – Eric Cloninger
    Jun 21, 2011 at 1:34

3 Answers 3

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Here is what I ended up doing, it works well:

  1. On your computer's Firefox, install the GMapToGPX bookmarklet.

  2. Prepare your itinerary with Google Maps Itinerary.

  3. While still on the Google Maps page, click on the GMapToGPX bookmarklet. It opens a GPX conversion dialog.

  4. Click on the blue tab buttons to make them read like this: "Route Track Points About". It will not work otherwise.

  5. Copy-paste the XML text in a new file, for instance myitinerary.gpx

  6. On Android, install Maverick.

  7. Copy your GPX file to /sdcard/maverick/tracks

  8. In Maverick, select the track file

  9. Scroll your way along the route at appropriate zoom levels to store the tiles in the cache.

The free version of Maverick allows 3 tracks files.

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MapDroyd offers free offline maps, but I believe the premium NavDroyd would be ideal for your needs - it offers navigation along with offline maps.

If you've already created the route in Google Maps on your PC, email yourself that link and open it on your device using Google Maps while you have a WiFi connection. I believe the newest versions of Google Maps have better support for offline caching.

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  • Thanks for the tips! I am stuck with Android 1.5 so no new Google Maps version I guess ><
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Apr 21, 2011 at 8:26
  • MapDroyd cites requirements as 1.5 and up, so hopefully that might work for you.
    – Sparx
    Apr 21, 2011 at 16:16
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The best option will be to use some software to create the maps of your itinerary and then some software like OruxMaps on your phone.

Here you can find a great article on how to do exactly this, totally oriented to hikers and bikers which in most cases will not have data coverage during the journey.

I found the combination of “Mobile Atlas Creator” on the PC to create the maps and OruxMaps on the phone to be pretty good.

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  • OruxMaps is not be available for my poor Android 1.5 >< I will try Mobile Atlas Creator, sounds interesting!
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Apr 21, 2011 at 9:31
  • Wow!, I haven't seen you are stuck with Andorid 1.5, this would be a great inconvenient, most of the apps are for 2.1 or higher and the few you found for previous systems are for 1.6
    – Doliveras
    Apr 21, 2011 at 9:35
  • Mobile Atlas Creator is excellent (thanks so much for the tip!), but it does not seem to allow me to draw a route, does it?
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Apr 21, 2011 at 10:35
  • I can load my route as a GPX file into MOBAC, but the route doesn't get printed on the tiles.
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Apr 21, 2011 at 11:18

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