Android 2.0 SDK Released, Google Maps Navigation Announced

stoolpigeon writes "The Android 2.0 SDK is now available from Google. This puts to bed concerns about Google not releasing the SDK or perhaps being in some kind of exclusivity deal with Verizon around 2.0. The release notes give a nice overview of what is there. Those who already have the SDK can grab the updated tools as SDK components; everyone else will pick up everything when downloading the new SDK." Relatedly, reader riffzifnab reports that Google has also announced Google Maps Navigation, a GPS application for Android 2.0 that takes voice input and integrates with internet searches and Street View.

Comments

Search on your route is a great feature

[elcid73]

Search on your radius and end point destinations are not very useful- on your route is great feature to have (gas stations, rest stops etc)

Re:Search on your route is a great feature

[manekineko2]

I'm really excited to have a GPS (someday, I'm not on Android yet, though hopefully Google will eventually release this to other platforms) that integrates satellite view and street view like Google Maps Navigation does.

Only downside (and it's a big one) is that I doubt Google will ever let you download the whole maps database for caching to your device. I love the freedom of having maps to everywhere I could conceivably ever want to drive already preloaded onto my GPS. Of course, I imagine with the satellite images and street view images that the size of the map database could be a few orders of magnitude larger than with traditional GPS databases.

Re:Search on your route is a great feature

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd be modestly surprised if they were to do it for free(whoever they buy the map data from would want money for an offline offering, and Google's ability to wring adsense out of offline users would be pretty limited); but I don't see any particular strategic or philosophical reason why google wouldn't, at some point, kick out an offline offering as a paid thing.

In the case of Gmail, google eventually offered POP3/IMAP, even though they'd presumably rather have people using their webapp. Presumably, they wanted to appeal to a die-hard "local client only" group and were confident that the ease of their web interface would keep most users on that side.

For GPS map data, I'd suspect that a similar situation would exist. There is a subset of the market that simply will not bite without local maps, even if they only rely on local maps part of the time. Google presumably wants their business(if only because people who haven't just spent $200 on a GPS are more likely to buy a nicer phone). At the same time, though, there are plenty of things, both obvious and subtle, that google can do to make a connected GPS experience much more convenient and pleasant than a pure local one.

My guess would be that Google will, eventually, either put out their own local map offering at a price more or less dictated by what their data provider charges or make it possible for 3rd party local GPS map apps to integrate with the google GPS UI. This will be largely to appease the people who think that offline use is essential, it won't mean any sort of major push into disconnected devices. For connected devices, they'll continue to do more or less what they do now, as well as offering the layer of connected features on top of offline material when the offline capable device is actually online.

Re:Search on your route is a great feature

[goaliemn]

It will download the data along your route, so you're good if you loose connectivity while going to your destination.

Its not the entire google database, but its a nice start.

Re:Looks like a great platform to develop for

[LiquidCoooled]

I am going to open an app-store-store.

Can you FIND me now?

[Jedi74]

A game of hide-and-go-seek will never be the same =)

Hardware requirements for 2.0

[LWATCDR]

I wonder how well 2.0 will run on say a G1, HTC Hero, ,Moto Clik or the Samsung Moment.
And will updates be made available?

Send route from computer to phone?

[sab39]

The feature I've always wanted from a GPS is the ability to go to google maps on my computer, come up with a route on there, and then send it to the device. This looks like it could easily offer that ability but curiously it's not mentioned in any of the blurbs that I've seen. Anyone know if it's supported?

Re:Send route from computer to phone?

[elcid73]

Seems mindnumbingly simple to implement using a google account. I always email the link to myself and then pull it up on my phone.

Re:droid will be mine

[elcid73]

Their only saving grace are those that try to precariously do 10 million things on their phone while driving- flipping back and forth from music player, to phone, to GPS to...heaven forbid, text messaging, all that requires UI navigation- then reseting back to GPS functions. I think stand alone makers are fighting a losing battle, but they can bank a little bit on the notion of dedicated functions in automobiles.... ie, driving/moving user interfaces are NOT the place to converge functionalities and abstract them with menus and navigation. Dedicated UIs have a reasonable place in autos.

Multi-touch for developers but not for end users

[Martin Soto]

The good news are that they seem to finally have added the long-awaited support for multi-touch. As listed in their relese notes:

MotionEvent can now report simultaneous-touch information for devices that support it. Up to three pointers can be tracked simultaneously.

The bad news are that, apart from some improvements to the on-screen keyboard, the GUI doesn't seem to be making use of it at all. So, those of us hoping to impress our acquaintances by zooming web pages in and out iPhone-style will probably have to wait until 2.1...

Bad for Garmin and TomTom

[ICLKennyG]

Tough day to be Garmin or TomTom, Wall Street is surely impressed with Droid's free GPS functionality. Garmin and TomTom are each down 15%+ today! http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/28/the-game-has-changed/

iPhone

[scorp1us]

So no google maps navigation for the iPhone?

Pardon me, but part of the appeal of the iPhone is it was best-of-breed Apple and Google. With the recent split, and if this continues, I see my next phone will be an Android device, and on the superior Verizon network.

I've been an iPhone fan boy for about 3 years, but I see a lot of delicious crow coming my way.

Open Handset Alliance

[Enderandrew]

Google does not control Android. Google can't singularly hold back an Android release. Google can't sign an exclusive deal where only one carrier gets an Android release.

Android is FOSS that is owned by the Open Handset Alliance.

Google offers various versions of Android to carriers with differing levels of Google branding, but given that the entire trunk is open to developers, AT&T has the same capability of obtaining Android code as Verizon, or any theoretical carrier.

Re:G1 owners left out in the cold

[Tumbleweed]

There's a lot of speculation that T-Mobile G1 owners might not get the update, which would suck.

Well, they're _already_ T-Mo customers - they must be used to suckage by now, right?

Re:droid will be mine

[InakaBoyJoe]

In Japan, phones have been capable of turn-by-turn navigation for a long time. When those apps first came out, there was a lot of speculation about whether mobile phone navi would kill the standalone / built-in navigation market. The car navi folks rushed to add mobile data connectivity, so they could download the latest maps and service info to compete with the "live" services offered by the mobile phones. Accessories for mounting your phone in the car in a visible position also became available.

In the end, both devices are co-existing in the market and very few people use the phone as the primary navigation device. Reasons are: (1) Inconvenience of having to launch the app, mount the phone in the car (or kill your phone's battery), and the fact that you can't use your phone. (2) Screen size. Unlike the tiny screens on North American GPS navi units, almost all units in Japan have a 5" or 7" screen. (3) The fact that most cars already have it built in anyway.

So I predict that in North America, the GPS navi units will evolve to: (1) Larger screens, (2) Data connectivity for live updates, and (3) More specialized features and improved service quality. The competition will be good. But the standalone / built-in navi devices won't just disappear.