• August 14, 2016

Google Maps for Android gets Wi-Fi-only mode and SD card download option

gigatech1Google has finally enabled two of the most requested features for Google Maps: WiFi only mode and the option to download offline maps to the SD Card. It might not seem like something everyone would want but these will be extremely useful to a lot of people. Here is a quick rundown of the two features.

Wifi Only Mode

The description here is pretty straightforward: Google Maps will only attempt data usage when Wifi is available. This will be useful for users who travel a lot and have very limited or expensive data plans when they roam. Often metropolitan areas around the world have a lots of free Wifi hotspots or services that offer cheap wireless. This will allow the phone and maps to use those as the user walks around rather than using mobile data. Even large offline map downloads will queue and download when wireless access is present.

SD Card downloads

Entry level smartphones come with as little as 8GB of storage. Some models might even go up to 32GB. When you factor in images, app data, application installs and music that storage quickly dries up. These phones also tend to have SD card slots of storage expansion and this feature will allow the user to choose the location where map data is stored. The maps for large areas can take a fair amount of space, and if you have multiple offline maps this is the only viable way for those on low storage smartphones.