[Const-me]

> I can't always download maps in advance because I rarely know where I'm going from day to day.

Can’t you download offline maps for the whole country?

On my phone I have two sets of offline maps for my + neighbor countries. Microsoft is free, Garmin was one time purchase. Both work OK without Internet.

[lightbulbjim]

Yeah, I'm not sure why it's such a common complaint that phone service is required for navigation. There are plenty of apps available which let you download whole countries/regions for very cheap, and can do all of their routing offline.

[exodust]

Because people will typically use Google maps, and Google only provides one month of offline map data before it demands to be put online again to "refresh" that data.

Honestly, the way Google changes the goal posts and rearranges the furniture within its own apps, I stay well clear of that mess when I need consistency and reliability. My phone remains a phone when I'm driving and need an uninterrupted, non-internet, non-phone navigation device.

[reaperducer]

You must live in a small country.

Downloading the data at a level of detail required for my needs would be many GB.

[Const-me]

Are you from US? Microsoft’s offline maps for the whole country take 3.81 GB.

Technically that’s indeed many GB, practically modern phones have many more GB available, e.g. my one has 32GB flash memory.