OutDoors GB - Offline OS Maps

I use this app for MTB and hiking route mapping and navigation. It’s fab. I find and plan my own routes using the website route builder. Also import GPX routes other people have created or I’ve paid for and keep them private for my own use. If you pay for the online OS map subscription you can log on whilst on WiFi it 3/4G and move in and out of the route map area to cache the tiles for when you’re out of signal range. I love that you move between 25k and 50k when zooming in as I would never buy both before and try make do with 25k. I also use google maps and google satellite when route planning. Having all these map tools at your disposal makes it very clear. Personally if I’m going to be doing a lot of complex route navigation in a wilderness area, I still buy the offline map for reassurance. Yes, you need to either buy OS maps for the area you’re going to or pay for the unlimited access. You can’t rely on free google maps when you’re in the middle of the countryside halfway up a mountain! Yes, navigation is battery intensive. Screen + gps + searching for signal in poor signal areas is battery intensive. Take a power pack with you.

I’ve been using this app since 2012 and have bought quite a number of maps. I use it all the time both when on holiday to record our touring and find interesting terrain and also at home to plan our holidays. Apart from the frustrations of having to redownload maps on occasions, being forced into subscriptions, becoming progressively slower - more so after the latest release, being prompted for suggestions about how to improve the user experience but not getting any feedback here are three things I would like to be incorporated. 1. Enable your recordings to be sorted chronologically not numerically as it is very frustrating when trying to look back over your journeys 2. To be able to freeze the current scale when zooming. Different information is given at different resolutions, using it in the car is totally different to using it for walking. Finding a route in the car does not need detail information and it is very frustrating just when the size of text is readable it suddenly shrinks and the information you want disappears. The size of the screen and resolution of the device makes a big difference to what you can actually see as does having older eyes. 3. When reopening the app, more often then not, I would like to return to the same selection.

After updating my iPhone to version 5.0 I was dismayed to find that during the set-up it had created around 300 duplicate routes on my website account! After spending several hours removing these duplicates I deleted and reinstalled the iPhone app. I now appear to have my 100 most recent routes on the app. I am assuming any new routes will get synced to the website automatically and visa versa but I’ve yet to test this fully. I have around 400 routes on the website that appear invisible on the app with no way to download these onto the phone via the app. This is the same situation as the previous version of the app so I’m not sure how this ranks as an improvement. TIP - if anyone wants to get one of their ‘invisible’ routes onto their phone then save it as a GPX file from the website then import it back onto the website. As this new copy will now be one of the most recent 100 routes it should (I believe) appear on your phone automatically.

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This is generally a good app, with good OS coverage throughout Britain. It is very much let down by the poor customer support, if a question is easily answered they do so, however more complicated issues are simply ignored! In addition there are differences between the offline OS maps and the live (OS unlimited) maps. At the same scale and supposed level of detail, the offline maps has less, missing and incorrect detail, for example it has paths missing or mislabelled (i.e. a bridleway marked as a footpath, or permissive paths not marked at all). This has been a major issue when walking out of phone signal range. I normally carry a paper map as backup, however why am I paying for a service which doesn’t provide the correct information? I would recommend looking around for alternative OS apps before paying to use this one. At least till they resolve the discrepancy in their maps and improve their customer support.

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Downloaded the new version of this app. What a disaster! When you look at your own routes, the tab for ‘my routes on website’ has disappeared so I can no longer download my painstakingly plotted routes to my phone. I have now lost all my routes that I’ve plotted for a walking holiday as I can’t download them to my phone. Please bring back the old version! UPDATE: the team have responded to my feedback and the search facility has improved in the latest version. However, I disagree with the removal of the ‘my routes on website’ button. Firstly, the automatic syncing is not obvious - I had to be told about it. Secondly, I don’t want all my routes on my website on my phone. Before, I could just choose which ones I wanted to download. I have therefore increased my star rating, but I’m not sure the ‘improvements’ have actually made my user experience better.