Description of App
Mentioned in TechCrunch, Mashable and the Wall Street Journal
Here's to finding your way no matter where you are. Here's to embracing the world around you and daring to explore new places without worrying about getting
lost. Here's to having the confidence to live your life, because you always know exactly where you're going.
With HERE, you can plan your journey ahead of time and save a map of your destination right on your iPhone. With maps for more than a 100 countries around
the world, you'll never be lost — even when offline. See exactly where you are and find the best way around with a route planner that shows you driving,
public transit and walking options at a glance.
When you're ready to head out, turn-by-turn, voice-guided driving and walk navigation takes you right to your destination — or use our public transit maps
and schedules to get around by train or bus. With HERE, your maps are always loaded and ready to use, and you never need to rely on an Internet connection.
HERE makes maps more useful. Plan your next journey on here.com and step off the plane with your full itinerary available right in your phone. Or find
restaurants and shops in the moment: browse ratings and reviews from TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet to get the best perspective on where to go. No matter
where you are, no matter where you're going, HERE will get you there.
What does HERE give you?
- Voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation that works around the world
- Maps you can save and use offline for more than a 100 countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia and Brazil
- Real-time traffic and incident information for more than 40 countries
- Public transit maps, directions and information for more than 900 cities
- A route planner that shows driving, public transit and walking options so you can quickly compare them
- Your saved places are available on all your devices so you can plan journeys easier
Follow us!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/here
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/here
Blog: http://360.here.com/
Note: continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life. You can reduce your battery usage by saving maps to your phone
ahead of time.
We love feedback, so please send your thoughts to appsupport@here.com
Comments
I like this app+tips
I like this app pretty much despite its quite serious accessibility flaws, of which there are two types:
- At times some items/controls turn inactive and thus disappear from the screen. Nevertheless VO still thinks that they are there and reports them on tapping/flicking. Of course interacting with such "phantom" controls won't have any effect.
One example is the main menu which is on the left side of the screen in portrait mode. By default it's visible and works with VO as expected. However if you pick a menu item, the menu becomes inactive and disappears from screen, and the controls that belong to that menu item appear on the right side. But VO will still find the main menu items on the left side, though double-tapping them will do nothing.
- Flicking through controls does not always behave as expected, though irregularities are quite rare. Sometimes you'll hear that infamous ding sound telling you there are no more controls in that direction, when in fact there are.
Finding controls by tapping around is a good workaround in such cases. If you're not in the main menu, useful controls are mostly on the right side of the screen, while the Back button and the button that returns to the main menu (labelled 'menuicontopbar') are in the top left corner.
I like the offline maps in this app much which are pretty straightforward to download for a given country, once you've set up a Here account (not hard to do from within the app itself) or you've logged in with your Facebook account. I also like that I can plan quite good public transit routes in offline mode. By the way you can switch between offline and online mode in the main menu. When using here I use cellular data only for dictating destinations.
Contrary to the description published in the Itunes appstore, currently there is no voice guidance when navigating in public transit or in walking mode (was this statement copied from the description of the Android version by mistake?). But you can get a detailed textual turn-by-turn description of the planned route which you can browse through before starting out. After planning your public transit or walking route, just double tap and hold somewhere in the middle of the right side of the screen (where the map is displayed) and when you hear the sounds drag your finger upwards way to the top and finally lift off your finger. This way you drag up the map and the textual instructions appear.
If I want to get voice guidance during my trips in the city (which of course I do), the best option I've found is pretending to be a car and choosing Drive from the main menu. Then I just set my destination (very easy to do) and after double-tapping on the right search result, find the Start button and off I go. I've found that the app gives very usable guidance in this mode, the routes are very accurate and the app is not oversensitive to my movements on the pavement as a pedestrian and does not recalculate the route needlessly. I've also found that the app gives very good guidance if I take e.g. a bus or a tram for some stops on my way. I like the voice guidance
much more than the one from Google Maps (in pedestrian mode), because the latter uses compass directions (North, East etc.), not exactly easy to figure out, while Here simply says e.g. 'After x meters turn left to Y street'. Another advantage to Google Maps is that Here always displays what street I am currently in. This info is easy to find if I am uncertain about this and VO reports it well.
Yes, at first Here seemed somewhat out of order with VO, but after some testing with sighted assistance and some practicing I can plan a route in about a minute.
I may try to contact Here support about the described accessibility flaws of the app, because I see that the developers have already put some accessibility work in. I may try to give them "steps to reproduce" instructions to reproduce the accessibility problems.