Hi everyone im new to the OSM community but eager to contribute. Im curious how many of you use OSM on android phones and how you interact with it. I’m interested both in terms of contributing but also using it for its map functionality e.g. navigation. Based in my early research so far the most popular apps seem to be:
- OsmAnd
- Vespucci
- Maps.me
- StreetComplete
- Organic maps
- Magic Earth
Im really looking for your opinions on what apps are worth using and for what purpose. Do you just use one app or multiple apps for different purposes. Which app would you recommend to your tech savvy friend and which to your mum? There’s probably a bunch more i haven’t mentioned so please also highlight them and any strengths or weaknesses they have. Thanks 😊
I use a few apps on my phone (degoogled android): -StreetComplete: highlights missing information, no knowledge about tagging required -EveryDoor: excellent poi/ micromapping -Vespucci: very feature rich, I use it for everything else (e.g.funny edge cases)
-Organic maps: works fine, bad public transport support where I live, couldn‘t get spoken directions to work ; I chose it over OSMand because of the smaller download size and because OSMand seemed kinda shady to me (are they?).
Interesting thought about osmand. I’ve used it for years, but never had that vibe, though I am not too involved with the devs.
Why do you think that?
I think it stems from me not understanding the Non free network services anti-feature in F-Droid when I first saw the app. As well as the fact that I thought that a part of the app is not fully open source. I did some minimal research and found out that the ui of the app is licensed under cc no redistribution and noncomercial. From a security/ privacy standpoint this is not a problem for me (since the code is not a black box)and it seems to benefit the developers which seems unproblematic and quite nice.
TLDR: I didn‘t do any research/ didn‘t understand fdroids anti-features
Yeah. Cool good on ya for changing your mind!