Google Maps for Mobile 5.0 announced

When Andy Rubin confirmed the existence of Motorola’s Honeycomb tablet, he didn’t spend much time on it, instead he gave a video demonstration of Google’s navigation app- Google Maps for Mobile. Google Maps for Mobile is one of the most popular GPS direction-finding apps for mobile phones. Costing next to nothing (if your data plan is unlimited, it’s practically free) it allows people to locate places, find detailed directions on how to get there, and follow their progress on the map. The latest version, 5.0, brings some very interesting new features to the table. The first of which is dynamic map drawing, which gives you vector images instead of regular bitmaps. The advantage of vectors are that they are smaller (which means faster downloads) and you can zoom into areas quickly with no rendering issues. At launch, this feature will only support over a 100 cities, but will eventually be expanded to include the rest of the world. This function also comes with new gestures for tilting and rotating the map. The new version of Google Maps will also include offline caching so in case you’re heading into an area with no reception, you should be able to download your maps first before heading to that area. Not all phones will be able to take advantage of the complete app though, but if you’re using a Galaxy S, Droid, Droid X, Droid 2, Droid Incredible, EVO 4G, Nexus S or G2, you should be able to. We’ll let you know when the app hits the app stores.