be-on-road ... a new(?) routing app

Just recently I came across an app for mobile devices that can make use of OpenStreetMap based offline maps, next to commercial maps to be bought.

It is named be-on-road and it is published by a company in Czech Republic: Aponia Software, s.r.o.

Almost all time I was sure that I know ALL apps that deal with offline routing on OSM data … but I have not found any information about be-on-road in the OSM wiki or related channels so far.

In my opinion it has some nice features like 3D-view, really nice rendering of buildings, very fast route calculation …

See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Be-on-road

I will add some more points to that wiki page if I can name some special points (good or bad) that are related to the processing of OSM features in this app.

So if you find any point that is worth discussing here, let us know.

PS: I am NOT related to the mentioned company in order to do any advertising here for this app!
But I would like to do a competition with other offline OSM apps like Osmand, MapFactor Navigator free, Navit, ZANavi and others.

Stephan

Thanks Stephan

First impression is OK. What surprises me are the mode options. I can choose foot, car and helicopter. I’m a cyclist. You know what option I hoped for :wink:
So at this time no Osmand killer yet but you never know what the future brings.

Nice and very good

With great pleasure I noticed that on 15. Januar 2015 an update for the offline map Germany is offered inside be-on-road app.

The download of the entire new map file with size over 1 GByte was quite fast. But when inspecting the list of used offline maps, I read Germany map with date 2014Q3.

Before that, we had the whole summer and autumn 2014 the map date 2014Q2 … so I was actually hoping to get more recent maps.

How is this date issue for other offline maps? And is there anyone who can determine the more exact date when data was taken from OSM server to produce be-on-road map 2014Q3 ??

On 21.09.2015 we had a major update of be-on-road:

on Android it needs three more permissions as app,

then map file size is heavily reduced … good job,

but you need a full new download of each map.

Further it seems that we have a new styled user interface,

and also the map drawing engine looks like newer and faster …

Also see the list of changed features on play.google.com or other software sources.

Anything watched as a regression by you?

OK, first bad news so far:
offline map files are no more stored on external SD card or similar memory, but on the internal device memory.
And there seems to be NO setting about the location of those offline map files … or yes?

new edit:
There is an FAQ section on http://www.beonroad.com where you can find a hint about moving the be-on-road folder from internal memory to an sd card memory manually by cut&paste (!)

Not tried so far … anyone with success? What copy target exactly on Android 4.4 ???

And:
you can become a beta tester for android app via play-store program link … see above mentioned website.

If I read the comments on Google Play, the update is making everything worse? It crashes more, house numbers disappeares, inability to search for street names, maps cannot be stored on sd-card but only on main memory (which is for older models way to small for the maps), menu are less user friendly, does not work on Android 2.2, etc, etc… Almost everybody there shouts: roll back the update!
A smaller map size is nice, if that means that it’s better compressed. If I read the comments, however, it just means they throw a lot of useful information (like street names and housenumbers) away.
So before you update, be advised to read the comments and decide for yourself if you really want to.

About storage path of map files:

I tried and found a solution!!

According to the FAQ on http://www.beonroad.com simply MOVE the whole BeOnRoad folder from internal device memory to the external memory, often the SD card.

Move the folder to the main directory of your SD card, NOT in any sub folder.

Use any good file browser on your android device to do that … my favourite is still Total Commander.

Then start the app again … it seems that the app is looking for all folders on any storage path on your device, it will find the moved folder on your SD card.

This works for me even on a device with Android 4.4.4 with restricted wrire access to SD card for all apps.

Anyone to reproduce?

If yes, this hint needs to be included in http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Be-on-road

Hi there,

I also read about this hint. But which folders exactly need to be moved? …/obb/cz.aponia.bor3 or /data/app/cz.aponia.bor3-1 or both or others? I’m using BoR (latest version) on Android and do not have enough internal memory left for downloading the relevant map!

Do not have any clue which excat folders to move.

Does anybody here by chance know and can tell me the applicable ones?

Many thanks in advance!

Bye

Hello Renth,

after installing that new app version an the new map download,

I found the new folder in the root directory of the internal memory … named “BeOnRoad”

It was NOT in the folder structure /Android/obb or /data

(There is NO folder “Android” in the internal memory of my device, which has Android 4.4.4

Then I simply moved that folder in the root directory of the external SD card, and NOT in any/Android/ subfolder.

Success?

Found 2 such directories:

One is /mnt/shell/emulated/0/BeOnRoad/
The other is /data/media/0/BeOnRoad/

Which one shall I move?

can you get an information about the size of all files inside each folder?

(At least you can get the size of a whole folder via TotalCommander on an android device)

I agree. And yet there is an application through which you can track your car and a name Mobile Recorder 24

I use Mobile Recorder 24 and it nice app ;]