alt Hacker News> I'd put money on the fact its good enough for most people's uses.
I don't know anyone (and I mean exactly zero) who ever used the offline feature of Google Maps. Online is good enough for people who almost always have an Internet connection. What happens when they don't is that they don't have access to the map.
People who care about having offline access (because they live in a place where they don't always have Internet or just because they care) don't bother using the Google offline feature. They use proper offline maps instead. Maybe in parallel to Google Maps: it's possible to have Google Maps and CoMaps.
Replies
I've used it. What happens is the app mostly keeps working as normal during connection dropouts (in between cell towers while travelling) instead of getting stuck loading or displaying an error. It's the exact same experience, not a separate offline experience.
> People who care about having offline access (because they live in a place where they don't always have Internet or just because they care) don't bother using the Google offline feature. They use proper offline maps instead.
Have lived in Alaska. Used offline Google maps. Worked perfectly for years and years.
Really? I'm genuinely surprised.
I've used it plenty for things like driving trip to remote places with poor signal (e.g. where you'll want to be able to get directions back to civilisation) and foreign cities (when you're on a phone contract with bad overseas data prices).