L5 Puremaps and GNOME maps - does it actually work?

Hardware Librem 5
1

Have you managed to use the Librem 5 navigation with any one of these two apps?
It feels like the location services do not update at all.(I have location on in the Setting app)
Any advice on navigation with the L5?

2

The Main Purpose of Librem 5 it is to have a TRUE GNU/Lnx mainlined Phone, but thats does not mean that Librem 5 will be a Fancy GNSS Navigation.
PPC_PhoneCapability of Librem 5 it is a lot complexity and tricked to get it a viable daily driver and Purism it putting all the manpower to reach it.
So yeah We still need to support this GREAT company: Purism.

3

I went on vacation recently and used the librem 5 exclusively for navigation with puremaps(to a place we had never been to).

My experience was thus:
The Good:

  • Navigation worked fairly well.
  • I was able to find nearby restaurants with the nearby venus option.
  • It had no trouble when driving through areas with no cell signal. (Only if you start with cell signal)

The Annoying:

  • Once it got confused about what street I was on in a downtown area.(showed me on the street next to it).
  • It takes 1-2 minutes to get a gps fix. As I generally knew the right direction to start off in this didn’t bother me.
  • Even though there’s a setting to enable showing the speed limit, it wouldn’t show it.
  • The phone can get hot when navigating. (You won’t burn yourself or anything)

The Bad:

  • It was sometimes a bit late in telling me when to turn.
  • I needed to use a battery pack to power it while driving as the car doesn’t provide enough power.
  • My early batch librem 5 can’t get a gps fix at all. So I recommend testing this first.

Usefull settings:

  • In Preferences → Navigation you can enable voice navigation so it talks to you.
  • In Preferences → Navigation you can enable Snap to road position otherwise it will sometimes show you driving off road which is distracting/confusing.
  • In Preferences → Navigation you can enable Smooth Animation Position. This makes the map display less jumpy.

Edit: As with most things I suggest you try it out first. I started just driving around to places I knew to see if it worked ok.

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4

PureMaps can use several maps and most probably use OpenStreetMaps. But one option seems to be HEREmaps (apparently requires a signup). Has anyone tried that - how and is it different? I noticed that the lastest version of HERE SDK mentions that they’ve implemented mapdownloader with SD card use and offline search engine - both features that could maybe make life easier (maybe faster) on L5 (provided they are/get implemented on PM). But, has anyone used HERE on PM?

Parts of their announcement

HERE platform release announcement

Update January & February 2024
Dear customer,

we are pleased to inform you about our recent releases of the HERE platform.

Highlights

HERE SDK 4.17.1.0

We are pleased to announce the availability of our release 4.17.1.0 of the HERE SDK for iOS, Android and Flutter.

The HERE SDK product family enables you to build powerful map applications based on the latest data from the HERE platform incorporating microservices and highly modularized components.

HERE SDK 4.17.1.0 is a minor release for the 4.17 code line with a lot of bugfixes and improvements based on customer feedback. We also added some new features for this release, for example:

  • MapDownloader : Added improved performance when installing new map data into the cache and the persisted storage, especially, when external SD cards are used.
  • Search: Added Address.stateCode that contains a state code for the address.
  • Search: Added PickedPlace.offlineSearchId that holds a place ID.
  • OfflineSearchEngine : Added StructuredQuery as input for OfflineSearchEngine.search and OfflineSearchEngine.suggest. This feature allows to search for Place results for a given ResultType such as STREET or DISTRICT.
  • Added PickMapContentResult.getPickedPlaces() to return a list of PickedPlace results.
  • Map style update: Added new embedded carto POIs for the following categories: Golf Shop, EV Dealership - New Vehicles, EV Dealership - Used Vehicles, EV Repair and Urgent Care Center.

Take a look at the latest release notes for your edition and platform to find out more details.

HERE SDK: Online, Offline and Global Maps for iOS and Android | HERE

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