Offline Open Street Map of Japan on Android

General talk
1

Hi folks, I am new to Open Street Map and I have a question about offline versions of OSM for Android. I’ll fly to Japan in about a week from now and I’m trying to find an OSM-based offline map of Japan’s largest metropolitain areas for my Android phone. Mobile internet in Tokyo has been capped since the March 11th earthquake, and with the possible resumption of rolling blackouts in summer I’d like to be prepared in case the cellphone networks go offline again.

I’ve been looking around and found various tutorials that suggested using RMaps (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.robert.maps&feature=search_result) with offline sqlite maps created by Mobile Atlas Creator/MOBAC (http://mobac.dnsalias.org/). I noticed that there has been a lot of discussion surrounding MOBAC and I understand that downloading huge parts of OSM is in general a touchy issue. However, it’s not like I don’t recognize the challenges an open project such as OSM is facing in this regard, and I’d be willing to contribute my share by giving a donation.

I’d love to use OSM to navigate my way around Tokyo, so I’d like to hear other users’ opinion on which is the most practical way to achieve my purpose.
Specifically,

  1. which Android app is most suited for displaying OSM data? (open source preferred)
  2. which would be the best way to download the required map data without putting too much strain on OSM’s servers?

Thanks in advance!

2

Have you already tried all available apps listed at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android ??

The best way to display large maps on mobile devices like an android one ist using vector based map graphics instead of bitmap tiles.

So what about Mapdroyd, Skobbler, ForeverMap ??

3

Hi stephan75, thank you for your suggestions. Yes, I checked the wiki before posting here, but I was a little overwhelmed by the abundance of apps, and I wanted to know which way was the least “expensive” to OSM in terms of server traffic.

I’ve tried several different apps now. Mapdroyd does the job just fine and is sufficient for most of what I’m trying to do. Unfortunately, none of the three apps that display vector-based maps is open-source, so I also gave RMaps a try, which works fine as well but is a little more memory-intensive.

Again, thanks for the suggestions! Keep up the good work!

4

Thank you for this information stephan! I found it very helpful!