Good news for CarPlay as Google Maps alternative gets speedometer

Google Maps already dominates the navigation space on iPhones and CarPlay, although Apple offers an alternative, and recent updates have made the app even better for those users.

Google Maps in CarPlay has gained incident reporting and a speedometer. Both of these features were most frequently reported by Apple users who did not want to use Apple Maps.

However, Google Maps isn’t the only app improving on CarPlay, as competitors are also becoming increasingly determined to conquer Apple’s ecosystem.

OsmAnd, the popular Google Maps alternative also available on iPhones and CarPlay, recently received a major update with several new features, including a speedometer.

The new update, which is available now on the App Store as version 4.8.1, includes a profile-dependent speedometer widget that users can add if they want to see their speed in real time. The update also includes turn-by-turn instructions when navigating to a route, and OsmAnd has tried to improve the experience by also adding more context about the next turn right after the navigation direction arrows.

The update also includes several other non-navigation improvements, including a refreshed weather UI, wind animation, and improved multi-selection mode for routes.

The addition of a speedometer is big news, as users like to see how fast they’re going by glancing at the screen. Before you start blaming everyone for needing this feature when the same information is displayed on the instrument cluster by the vehicle itself, you should know that navigation apps typically offer more accurate speed information because they rely on GPS data.

Waze has offered this feature for years, and it’s one reason many people use it over Google Maps. Now that Google Maps is getting a speedometer, the feature gap between the two is getting smaller, so it’ll be interesting to see how Waze’s market share plays out in the long run.

As a side note, if you don’t see the speedometer in Google Maps, it’s because Google is using a phased rollout model for users worldwide. This means you don’t have to install the latest version of Google Maps to get the speedometer, as the feature is enabled through a server-controlled process, so the company will activate it on your device once a certain level of reliability has been achieved.

A phased rollout allows Google to enable the feature for small groups of users, discover and diagnose potential issues, and then improve availability once everything is working properly for all users. The speedometer should be available to all Google Maps users by the end of the summer, but in the meantime, the incident reporting feature for CarPlay should already be available in the app. Just look for the new button on the home screen when you launch Google Maps.