Google’s famous map and route app is getting a complete overhaul in its mobile version on both Android and iOS.
A few days ago, Google celebrated the 15th anniversary of Maps, its famous - and almost unavoidable - cartography and route service, launched on February 8, 2005. For the occasion, the editor of Mountain View unveiled a new logo highlighting the famous pin now in the emblematic colors of the company, while announcing the arrival of a new version of its mobile application, the online version remaining for the time being virtually unchanged.
The good news is that after a drop-by-drop deployment, the new version of the Google Maps application is now available to everyone, in French, on Android and on iOS! To benefit from it, always for free, of course, you just have to update from the Play Store or the App Store.
In addition to the icon change, the new version of the Google Maps application benefits from a complete overhaul, with significant modifications to its interface. Thus, the menu called "hamburger" - the three small horizontal lines at the top - disappears, most of its elements remaining accessible via the avatar icon at the top right.
In return, the items related to navigation are now grouped in five tabs at the bottom of the screen.
- Discover allows you to explore, search and find new places around.
- Routes is used to search for an itinerary taking into account multimodal journeys - that is to say combining several means of transport -, while offering the possibility of using the new Live View mode, which displays directions in augmented reality for pedestrian routes.
- Saved brings together the saved places, but also the reservations, the app fetching them directly in Gmail or in Google Calendar.
- Contribute allows you to add information, publish photos and leave comments on places to improve the community dimension of the application.
- Finally, Actualités displays suggestions for interesting places located near places that are often visited.
Major innovations that will require a little time to adapt, but which prove that Google is keeping up with the times by constantly improving its flagship application. A small change of habits to be expected, therefore, but which is justified, especially since Google Maps now benefits from a private browsing mode, which avoid leaving traces on his travels.
