Gadgetory

hey guys it's Branham in a min from pocketnow.com if you've got a smartphone you probably use your mapping application all the time they are so handy for finding directions to places for getting traffic info for finding nearby coffee shops and restaurants it just those goes on and on they are so powerful and they're so useful thanks to GPS and these days smart phones get GPS fixes in like a second so if the phone knows where you are it can provide a ton of location-based services based on your location Google Maps is now available on the web we're going to take a look at it in this video let's get to it so right now Google Maps on Android and iOS are different and it's a lot better actually on Android which makes sense because Google makes Android and Google Maps is also a product of Google obviously so we've got added features like this awesome two finger scroll which allows us to pivot the map and then turn it we've also got a really cool way to see the tops of buildings if we get close to an area these buildings will sort of rise out of the ground but you have to be in the right place to do it so we'll go over here and this really helps you to be precise when you're trying to navigate and you are on the ground somewhere and here are the buildings over here and we can get closer you can see just this 3d view of these buildings and if you tilt it it looks so futuristic and so awesome to be able to look at a map in this way and of course from here we can turn on various layers through this button here we can turn on traffic take a look at the conditions on the road we can turn on satellite view terrain and even go to more layers to get different ones that are available for Google Maps very helpful you can even use Street View on this the iOS version is very similar it's got some similar capabilities except for those few that were just mentioned another thing that the Android app does that iOS does not do is turn-by-turn speech navigation so it'll actually tell you where to go and it'll be like a real navigation like a Garmin or another standalone GPS device right on your dashboard so definitely in terms of Google Maps Android has iOS B but now they've released a version of Google Maps for the web that levels the playing field so we're going to go to the web browser on both of these devices and here we go and the interface is exactly the same except that an Android of course you get a little bit more space on the bottom here cut because in iOS you have this bar down here so they're basically the same we're going to move the iPhone away so we can talk about the interface here on the Android phone so very simple it doesn't even have pinch-to-zoom you might be wondering why would I use the the web app version if I could just use the regular app the native app that has all the features we're gonna talk about that in a sec but first in order to use this you have to use these on-screen controls which feels kind of last year really and up here we've got some buttons we can search obviously for a nearby coffee shop after pressing the little compass there which will find your location using GPS on your phone we've got layers just like we have on the regular app and right now it's got a layer for a location that I found you can also turn on satellite view turn that off and you know it's very similar to what you get in terms of the the regular mobile app over here to the right is history so you can drill in and see where you've been and where you certain what you search for and to the right we've got some other inference of information get directions this won't do the turn-by-turn based navigation unfortunately you got to go to the app to do that and then we go to my map you can clear map to remove any markers that you might have and you can sign out of your account and get help now you might be wondering why would I want to use Google Maps in the web when I can just go to the regular app and get all the features here's why so let's go to a website and interestingly it hides the address bar unless you open it up by pressing the Menu key and we're in Android of course so google.com let's say you are searching for something say you're searching for pizza and it knows where you are as is the case with the you know Google calm on a mobile device and we scroll down and we see a Mac right and we say okay here's a pizza a pizza place we want to go to so you click on that and then you get an entry for maps and if you tap on maps you'll get a choice you want to use the Internet or do you want to open up the Maps application well if you go to the Internet keeps everything on the same program really not that big of a deal to be honest too open up the mobile app you can do that from that previous screen anyhow but this just makes the the workflow a little bit more streamlined so you're not bouncing in an app out of multiple applications so that's Google Maps on the web it's it's very simple and it kind of lacks a lot of features then you really need to add more features to make it be as compelling as it is in the application that you can run sort of by itself so let us know what you think about Google Maps on the web try it on your Android or iOS device gave us some feedback and let us know what you think about it and if it's something that you would actually use if you liked this video please give us a thumbs up and thanks for watching that's it for now