Google Introduces "Download Map Area" to Google Maps for Android 5.7

As Android is gaining more and more market share, the real "power" behind the opensource OS Google is busy introducing all sorts of new features to help steal some more Apple iOS and other geeks, little by little ;-). It was actually yesterday that Google updated their mobile map for Android devices to 5.7 which is still in its beta stage.

Anyhow, today in the Google blog they also introduced a very useful feature that lets Android users to save their Google maps to the local storage devices on their Android mobile phone thus letting the users make an "offline" version of their maps which are quite handy when you don't have any Wi-Fi or other faster internet connection available (nothing at all included :D) but thanks to this feature, once saved now you can still "browse" and locate landmarks!.

Finally!... ;-)

As said, to have this feature you'll have to have the latest version of the Google Maps for Android (which is 5.7 at the moment) and once launched you should see a "download map area" option added automatically, as in the above screenshot. Although currently there is a certain "radius restriction" thus the features currently lets you save about an area of 10 miles in radius.

You can save as many maps you want and after 30 days of their original downloaded date, they'll be deleted automatically. The downloading time may change according to the radius + your internet connection's speed but these "offline Google maps" won't let you enjoy other popular features such as "satellite views" and "3D buildings according to Google. But you can use these offline maps for finding landmarks while in "no-reception area" which, as anyone can see, is something very very useful nonetheless.