Is OsmAnd subscription/purchase worth it?

heyfrancis@lemmy.ml to Free and Open Source Software@beehaw.org – 34 points –

Android auto for OsmAnd is a paid feature either through subscription or one-time purchase. Has anyone tried it and do you think its worth it?

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Somewhat off-topic: those who are just looking for a decent navigation app based on OSM with a much smoother rendering than OSMAnd, try "Organic Maps", it's amazing.

Just gave this a go after checking out OSMAnd for a few weeks, immediately looks far more usable. Good tip.

Have you tried the "OsmAnd~" version on fdroid? I think that one is basically the full version without a paywall. You could try yourself if you find it worth it, and buy the official app if you want to support the project.

Yeah that's what im using from fdroid but Android auto is not available unless i subscribed or pay for the app. Wondering hows the app for people who already used it.

The problem is that android auto is restricted to apps installed from the play store.

The F-Droid Version supports Android Auto, but it's blocked by Google.

I managed to enable it by spoofing the installer-package during installation.

For me, the navigation is near unusable. Location tends to lag behind by a few seconds when running on Android Auto. On my phone it's fine.

I managed to enable it by spoofing the instaler-package during installation.

How to do this?

I built a custom app to do it since I couldn't manage to fire the relevant intents from an adb shell without root.

I lifted the code from AAAD

Specifically the InstallAPK method in MainActivity.java

Intent intent;

            if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
                intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_INSTALL_PACKAGE);
                intent.setData(getUri(file));
                intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION | Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
            } else {
                intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
                intent.setDataAndTypeAndNormalize(Uri.fromFile(file), "application/vnd.android.package-archive");
                intent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
            }

            intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_NOT_UNKNOWN_SOURCE, true);
            intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_INSTALLER_PACKAGE_NAME, "com.android.vending");
            getApplicationContext().startActivity(intent);
        }

Basically you construct an Intent ACTION_INSTALL_PACKAGE with data pointing to the APK file and the extras EXTRA_NOT_UNKNOWN_SOURCE=true and EXTRA_INSTALLER_PACKAGE_NAME="com.android.vending" which tells the installer that this APK is not sideloaded and it's the play store asking to install it.

You might still need to enable unknown sources in Android Auto developer settings (separate from phone developer settings).

If I remember, I'll try to pull the code for my app from my PC and post it.

I tried osmand~ from f droid (which is essentially the paid version) and for browsing it works great. Navigation was pretty bad however. I had a lot of issue where when I click to find a route to an address it would get stuck and never route. Also in my testing, it would take you some pretty bizarre routes where I couldn't trust it. I am unfortunately back to Google maps that I dowloaded through the aurorastore using as anonymously as I can without any Google account on my device.

While OSMand has taken me through some scenic routes, rather than more direct routes, Google Maps had me exiting and re-entering highways for fun!

Check the navigation routing options in OSMand, because that will influence how it routes you.

It works fine for me but i need it while driving. Does the app lets you use android auto? The one from fdroid has purchase feature (google billing) removed so need to download from playstore to purchase the app.

I literally travel the world with it and it worked fine for me perfectly fine most of the time in places where I woulden't expect anything to work fine .

In line with my experience, tried it to plan a route around northern France this summer and it got stuck a couple of times. Essentially, it tried to route me back to a position earlier in the route and would not recalculate, resulting in me going in a circle twice. Especially annoying if you are on the motorbike and cannot just restart the navigation mid-ride. Switched to the openstreetmap app, their navigation never did such a thing to me. Very weird since the projects seem to be somehow related

I use it for foot navigation on hikes or to find things not on Google maps, like park benches or public toilets. Works like a charm. Never really used it for car navigation though, as it doesn't work on Android auto. It's very worth it in my opinion.

it doesn't work on Android Auto

This may be dependent on your car/Android version? I've started using OsmAnd with Android Auto on my 2019 Subaru Outback and it works quite well.

Without Android Auto I've tried routing with OSMAnd because I love it's features but I don't think it's great at routing. You may have to change some hard to find settings to get it to not route you as the crow flies. Also it specifically states if your route is too long and takes over 10min to calculate you may need to add intermediate destinations.

I use Magic Earth for routing and believe it works great and has the best UI. It has Android Auto though I don't use it.

Wrong community?

Why?

The paid version is neither free nor open source software?

the paid version is still Free and Open source. In this case free stands for Free as in Free speech and not as in Free beer.

Also none of the Free or Open source licences prevent you to sell the compiled software. Hell, most of the Open source licences don't even prevent you to close the source code (Mozilla, MIT, etc.) it's only the GPL and a few others that mandate that the source code must be made available on request...

the paid version is still Free and Open source

As I understand it, the paid version is not free and open source. For example, it includes a weather plugin which is non-free.

I cannot find any resources other than: OsmAnd is GPLv2, the API is MIT. I cannot find anything about the plugins, but that would only mean that the plugins are a mix of open and closed source, though the app itself is still open source.

standing to their documentation they have an exception to the GPLv2 for the Google Play app to be able (my guess here) to better process payments and such.

So to my admittedly poor understanding:

OsmAnd -> open source
OsmAnd on Google Play -> closed source but compiled from the FOSS code
Plugins -> YMMV depending on the plugin

Yet because OsmAnd and it's API itself are FOSS I would argue that this is still the right community for the OP question. :)