Android Preview: Maps

As promised, here’s our second installment of the Google Android applications.

Last time I discussed the Android browser, which is probably one of the strongest of the included applications in the platform. We’ll talk next about Maps.

Maps is one of Google’s most successful products outside of their core search business. This is shown by Google’s efforts to make the lives of Maps Mash ups builders easier by providing more tools and technology to play around with Maps. Naturally Maps will also be a strong part of the Android platform.

The Maps application is navigated using the D-pad and the center button, the menu keys, and T and G keys for zooming in and out, respectively. When the menu is not show, the center button also zooms in to the center of the Map. Opening up the maps menu gives you the following functions: Search, Direction, View sub-menu, Zoom in and Out , and the About Menu. If the device sports a touch-screen, then you can move around by panning around the map using the touch screen. A double tap will zoom the map in.

Search allows you to search for locations and businesses. Search results are presented a list view by default, but you can easily toggle to the map view by pressing the @ key in theyboard. When viewing a search item either on the list or map view, you can show more details about a particular result by pressing the center button. This gives you access to more details. For example, when viewing results for a business search, details such as complete address and phone number will be shown. You can then initiate a phone call from the listed number. When in the map view, you navigate through the search results by clicking 1 (previous) and 3(next).

Directions is another feature of the Andoir Maps application. Right now, when you ask for directions, you have to manually enter both the start and end address, even if you already have a selected location (say from a previous search). Hopefully this gets addressed in the final version. Maps also integrates with Contacts to let you populate either or both of the (start and end) addresses from your contacts.

Maps also displays Satellite view as well as traffic information.

With both the front end and the back end at their control, it’s a given the Android’s Maps application will kick ass. There are still some questions though, like will it integrate with GPS systems, or will it let you take a map and use the data in another application in the phone, and other integration stuff. Hopefully as the Android platform and apps mature towards its initial release in 2008, these questions will be answered and that more features be added.