The Five Best Android Apps by Google (Page 3 of 4)

Google Maps for Android begins by providing all of the features available for Google Maps on the web. You can bring up a map of any area with directions and different viewing options, including satellite view and street view, allowing you to see actual images of the places you’re viewing with the addresses imposed right on top. There are some pretty cool phone-specific features here  as well, especially if your phone has working GPS. Using that GPS, your phone will give you a pinpoint “you are here” blue dot for you to start from, and even if you don’t have GPS, it can still approximate that location for you. You can use the Google Buzz layer to check out what’s happening at that location, and since your phone already knows where you are, its as easy as typing in an endpoint to get driving directions, including real-time traffic updates so you can adjust those directions to avoid grid lock. It will even give you transit directions or a list of nearby bicycle routes, if you want to take a greener route and avoid driving. And for those people like me with a less-than perfect sense of direction, you can go one step further than a text-based list of driving directions, and use the beta “Navigation” feature to get turn-by-turn GPS directions. If you’ve got an Android phone with OS 2.0 or higher, you can place your phone in a car dock, and have it switch itself immediately into “car mode,” jumping directly into Navigation and making it easier for you to search. Otherwise, bring up the app and find a safe place to set down your phone, and search for a location by typing or speaking, or save destinations to quickly select them later. And if you find reading a map difficult, you can switch the standard map-based view to have the GPS overlay your directions onto an easier to visualize Google Maps street view or satellite view. Whether you have a great sense of direction or not, with the sheer amount of assistance Google Maps can provide for you in telling you where you are, finding where you want to go, and helping you to get there, this is an extremely useful app for anyone to have on their phone.

Most features of Google Maps are available on other smartphones, but the Navigation beta is available exclusively for the Android OS.

 Google Maps lets you find out about locations on the ground, but download Google Sky Map from the Android market and suddenly you can learn more about the locations up above as well. Using your phone’s time and date in addition to its GPS and compass data, you can learn more about the constellations in the night sky. Sky Map determines your location and gives you a detailed map of the sky above you wherever you are. You can manually scroll through it for information on specific areas of the sky, or if you want to know more about a specific star or constellation you can see, you can simply point your phone at the sky in that direction and let your phone’s display bring up the information on it. Great for the casual stargazer, but what about a budding astronomer that wants to know more about something that’s not directly above where he or she is? Sky Map allows you to open a search feature that will give you the location and information on any star or planet you type in, and with access to the Hubble Image Gallery, you can look for great photos and information to impress your friends with later. Sky Map is a great tool for casual observers and students alike, making it easy to locate and learn about any of the things in the night sky that many users would otherwise never know much about, or maybe even never be able to recognize and identify at all.

Google Sky Map is available exclusively for the Android OS.