[megous]

This is not a new thing. Google maps were hard to use as a map (on mobile, but on desktop too due to horrible styling) for a looong time for the purpose you state.

We just snap a photo of a tourist or transit paper map and use that on holidays. Way faster and easier to use for just walking around or planning a non-direct transit route.

Even a basic information like, "will we be walking up a hill" is hard to see on gmaps. Even on terrain overlay, the shading is sloppy an imprecise, and contour lines are a mess (too sparse, and marked too sparsely), no hills are marked with height so it's hard to see what's up/down.

Same location (lol):

https://megous.com/dl/tmp/5e34dc4220021506.png

https://megous.com/dl/tmp/e13a2b0008ba6d0a.png

[frosted-flakes]

Google Maps is horrible for use as just a map. I like to use an external Garmin GPS device in my car (with my own custom high-contrast map theme[1]) because it works so well as a HUD map. I rarely set a route, but I frequently refer to it while driving, and as a result I get to know the roads I drive on quite quickly. One of my favourite features is the blue line it paints on the map behind you, which makes it easy to orient yourself when driving in a place you've already been.

[1]: For some reason, both Google Maps and Apple Maps have terrible contrast, to the point where they're completely unusable for me in dark mode, especially while driving. Apple Carplay is useless to me for this reason. Garmin's default map theme is pretty decent, but they actually let you change map themes, and load custom ones if you're so inclined. So I made the street lines bright and bold, with high-contrast keylines. It's an absolute joy to use now.