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Comment by pja | Hacker News Reader

OSMAnd+ plus does exactly that.

OrganicMaps looks like it might have a better UI though.

I don't like OSMAnd+ because on Android panning and scrolling around is slow even if you have pre-downloaded a map. Other apps have a more fluid interface.

OSMAnd plus is only free on F-Droid, on an iOS device it's pretty expensive or limited.

The full version for Android was about 12 bucks. The major difference, at least to my understanding, is the unlimited download of maps.

For me that's the killer argument and absolutely worth the price.

I think it really speaks for the developers to make it available for free to F-Droid users and personally I think it's a low price for a - for me - great app.

Yeah, I guess you are right, you get a lot for those 12 euros (or whatever it is, I can't really find it, but I remember a screen with costs for extra maps, altitude data, etc).

Edit: Ah found it, unlimited maps are 12.99 eur once, OsmAnd Live (Wikipedia offline integration and Altitude lines and shades) are 7.99 euros a year. This is all free on F-Droid.

It's free on F-Droid because they haven't bothered to implement technical countermeasures to unpaid downloads. The app developers are still updating that content and providing the bandwidth.

The Play Store fees are effectively voluntary donations to the devs & the OpenStreetMap project. If you really want to pay nothing, they’re not going to stop you - F-Droid is right there.

Yeah, that's one way to put it.

Really, F-Droid is so small it's understandable that they don't do anything about it.

Wondered what expensive meant, On iOS full featured is currently 2/mo or 8/yr, no lifetime license.

The routing of OSMAnd+ is limited to a few hundred kilometers. On holidays I do do longer trips. OrganicMaps should still have the contraction-hierarchy routing which scales better for longer distance routing.

OSMAnd doesn’t always have routing limited to a few hundred kilometers. If one is cycle-touring, then the Brouter engine plugin for OSMAnd can be installed and that generates pretty quickly very long-distance routes.

But with regard to planning long car journeys, there is always the option of generating the route using one of the several OSM-based routing engines on the web, then downloading a GPX file, opening it in OSMAnd, and telling OSMAnd that is the route you want to follow.

I just add intermediary way-points for long routes. Works well enough.

Not sure why you're downvoted, it's a legit problem, especially if practically any other engine doesn't have a problem with it. In reality I think I'd just split my route to get around the problem and call it a day, but it was convenient to not think about this, when planning my 800 km drive.

I just tested, OSMAnd generates a 900 km route on my phone in one go, in about 10 seconds.

I tested it too, and ended up generating an 1000 km route without a problem. It was giving me "Ending point too far from nearest road" - until I figured out that the problem was the missing maps. As long as you have at least the road map downloaded for the whole route, it does the job.

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