Preinstalled Navigation App Change | Changement de l'application de navigation préinstallée |Änderung der vorinstallierten Navigations-App

Apps & Core Settings
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Hi everyone,

Since the beginning, we’ve used Magic Earth as our default navigation app. Recently, it became a paid app. More importantly, since it was never open source, it no longer aligns with our core value of prioritizing open source software for preinstalled apps.

As a result, we’ll be switching to an open source alternative in our next release.

We’ve created a poll with potential replacements — please vote and share your thoughts, including any pros and cons you think are worth mentioning.

Just a reminder: all our preinstalled apps are uninstallable. If an app is no longer included by default, you can always reinstall it later via F-Droid or Aurora Store. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks for being part of the community!

–DE–

Hallo zusammen,

Von Anfang an haben wir Magic Earth als unsere Standard-Navigations-App verwendet. Kürzlich wurde sie kostenpflichtig. Wichtiger ist jedoch, dass sie nie Open Source war und daher nicht mehr mit unserem zentralen Wert übereinstimmt, vorinstallierte Apps möglichst auf Open-Source-Software zu basieren.

Daher werden wir in unserem nächsten Release auf eine Open-Source-Alternative umsteigen.

Wir haben eine Umfrage mit möglichen Alternativen erstellt — bitte stimmt ab und teilt eure Meinungen, einschließlich Vor- und Nachteilen, die ihr erwähnenswert findet.

Zur Erinnerung: Alle unsere vorinstallierten Apps können deinstalliert werden. Wenn eine App nicht mehr standardmäßig enthalten ist, könnt ihr sie jederzeit über F-Droid oder den Aurora Store neu installieren. :slightly_smiling_face:

Vielen Dank, dass ihr Teil der Community seid!

–FR–

Bonjour à tous,

Depuis le début, nous utilisons Magic Earth comme application de navigation par défaut. Récemment devenue payante et n’ayant jamais été open source, nous souhaiterions privilégier une alternative open source plus proche de nos valeurs à partir de la prochaine mise à jour.

Nous avons créé un sondage avec plusieurs remplaçants potentiels — merci de voter et de partager vos avis, y compris les avantages et inconvénients que vous jugez importants.

Petit rappel : toutes nos applications préinstallées peuvent être désinstallées. Si une application n’est plus incluse par défaut, vous pouvez toujours la réinstaller plus tard via F-Droid ou Aurora Store. :slightly_smiling_face:

Merci de faire partie de la communauté !

0 voters
4 Likes
2

petal maps is good

3

It is maybe good, but I’m not sure that a closed-source Chinese app is what we want in iodéOS…

4 Likes
4

Of those 3 I only know and use OsmAnd and it has everything a maps app needs. Many features which allows users to cusomize it by one’s needs and preferences. That makes it flexible - but also not so easy to set up. However, finding a route is much slower than that of MagicEarth and sometimes it doesn’t find a long distance route.

5

It is true that Magic Earth was not Open Soucre, but the manufacturer promises data security. On request, I also received a link where I could download the app directly from Magic Earth without Google or other stores. I need a navigation app that offers voice output in German and also works on older smartphones.
I will test it and then mark my decision.

6

I love the flexibility and features of OsmAnd, but I think CoMaps is the better choice for a default app. It is very easy to use and simple by design which might work better for a lot of users. I see OsmAnd more of a power-user choice.
Big vote for CoMaps

4 Likes
7

I’ve not used the other two in this list so little point me trying to argue which is actually best overall, but since nobody else has yet brought it up I can espouse some of the fundamental virtues of Organic Maps, as listed in the app’s About screen, those being:

  • No ads, no tracking, no data collection
  • No battery drain, works offline
  • Fast, minimalist, developed by the community

It’s also open source. Been using it on my FP3+ the last couple of years and it’s always getting better, with regular updates. I rarely use routing or navigation, preferring my own head, but IIRC I had a bit of a faff trying to install some text-to-speech engine and the aural results were less eloquent than something out of a Commodore 64. That’s probably less the fault of the app itself and more whatever hardcore open source helper packages I installed from F-Droid.

It has also had trouble finding my initial location when I open the app, or will suddenly return to a location I was in days or weeks ago, though I had this same issue in Magic Earth and I think it’s something to do with my locked down iodéOS location tracking features and/or some weirdness with the FP3’s GPS implementation. I don’t have Google location services integration checked in Organic Map’s settings.

I like the modularity of the Download Maps feature, meaning I can grab and update individual regions and/or countries. Magic Earth’s map download feature was painful and inflexible and would set about slowly downloading an entire set of multi-gigabyte files.

5 Likes
8

As a point of clarification, CoMaps is a recent fork of Organic Maps (which is a fork of Maps.ME). CoMaps’ source code repo has a brief writeup on the motivation for the fork.

5 Likes
9

For Organic Maps / CoMaps you will need to install a TTS engine at the system level, then it can be used by them for voice navigation. They even have a writeup for using RHVoice, noting that it sounds pretty good (for English), but I think it only support a few languages (and not German??) so you may have to search around a bit.

10

I’d prefer OSMAnd+ since it has lots of features like detailed profile settings (e. g. custom max. speed settings for several road types).
One downside of OSMAnd+ is the pretty slow routing engine. Therefore OrganicMaps in addition could be a good option.
But at the end I wonder why you don’t just add OSMAnd+ and OrganicMaps (seems to be pretty much the same as CoMaps) to Settings → Apps → Preinstalled Apps → Maps & Navigation?

Kind regards
Chris

11

Espeak works quite fine for me and offers German language support.

1 Like
12

I have had good experiences with SherpaTTS

3 Likes
13

I agree,
I think OrganicMap with a relatively good speech engine (e.g. SherpaTTS) is a good solution and it is getting better and better
El

14

Losing Maps (Magic Earth) will not be nice, mainly because it has its own text-to-speech (TTS) build in. So far, I had used RHVoice as TTS app, but there, speakers are neither available in German nor in French (even the English one is not really desirable). It gives me the creeps to imagine what may be the result if RHVoice tries to pronounce German (or French) street and town names during navigation. Searching around, I found SherpaTTS which performed surprisingly well in German (not tried it in French). I recommend adding SherpaTTS together with the new maps app to the list of default apps.

15

You’re free to install Magic Earth from Aurora and pay the yearly fee, if you prefer. But we cannot keep an app which will become unusable for users that don’t want to pay.

16

For all those mourning the loss of MagicEarth, here is a reply from the manufacturer.

Hello, thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your concerns.
We completely understand your frustration with the current requirement to use a Google or Apple account for subscriptions. You are absolutely right, privacy is one of the core values that Magic Earth stands for, and we appreciate users like you who are committed to maintaining control over their digital footprint.
We want to assure you that our team is actively working on introducing alternative payment options that will allow you to subscribe directly without having to sign up with Google or Apple. This will allow users with custom ROMs or de-Googled devices to continue using Magic Earth without compromising their privacy after receiving a link to an APK file.
The feature is currently under development. We are working on it as quickly as possible and will make an announcement as soon as it is available.
Thank you again for your patience and for being a part of our privacy-conscious community. If you have any further questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to let us know we are always here for you.
Yours sincerely

4 Likes
17

Mich interessiert nicht so sehr die Sprachunterstützung. Ich frage mich, ob eine der oben genannten Alternativen aktuelle Verkehrsinformationen und alternative Routen bei Staus anbietet.
Weiß da jemand bescheid?
Danke!

I’m not so interested in language support. I wonder if any of the alternatives mentioned above offer up-to-date traffic information and alternative routes in the event of traffic jams.
Does anyone know?
Thank you!

18

Nein
Alleine “here” könnte eine Alternative sein

19

CoMaps & Organic Map very silmar apps (don’t know who copy/paste UI), but don’t have voice navigation, I try TTS but very bad solutions.

Logical to me choice is Osmand. :grinning_face:

20

I just took a look at Sherpa TTS, the test voices are very good. I don’t use voice navigation in maps however, so haven’t given that a try. Can some that uses voice navigation install Sherpa TTS and evaluate it with CoMaps (or Organic Maps)?