Although we know many of you are diehard Bing fans and loathe anything by Google, we won’t look down upon you at all if you so occasionally choose to flirt with Google Maps on Windows Phone. While Google has infamously declared they have no plans for any official Windows Phone apps, developer Alexey Strakh has been working on his clone, gMaps, for quite some time now on Windows Phone.
Version 2.0 for the Pro version went live at the beginning of January and now its free sibling also just received a nice bump, including some Windows Phone 8 support. Although no changelog is posted, we can tell you that for Windows Phone 8 it does now support a doublewide Tile in addition to the smaller Tile...
gMaps also has the super important fast-resume function, meaning the app won’t re-launch when you tap the Tile again but instead will resume from where you last left it. That’s crucial for mapping apps as presumably it is something you’ll hop in and out of frequently.
The app itself also benefits from new Windows Phone 8 programming as it seems quite fast and efficient on our Lumia 920. Of course users on 7.x can also use version 2.0 on their phones
We don’t think we’d shock you if we mentioned that gMaps features just about everything Google offers in their official apps and is probably better than what they could do, right? Third party developers have always gone above and beyond what a lot of official sources tend to offer and that’s the case here.
gMaps offers your location, map layers (including traffic and weather), your speed, compass support, driving directions, location discovery, Google Latitude, Street View, Share, Route to Contact, Night Mode and Live Tiles, to just name a few. It basically has the whole Google kitchen sink thrown into a nice little app.
The app comes in two flavors, both updated to 2.0: there’s the free, ad-supported one, which can be found here or the ad-free Pro version here for $1.99. All Windows Phone versions are supported.
If Google Maps is your thing, there really is no other choice.
Via: Windows Phone Italy
