OsmAnd Live - struggling with the basics

[Mario Cassar]

Dear all,

I have OsmAnd Live which is as delightful to use as much as frustrating. I have just returned from a two week tour on my motorbike in Europe and tried to use it as much as possible. However, there were many moments where I had to switch it off and use other Navigators. I do not know if is missing the very basics or perhaps I am failing to understand how it works.

These are my observations -

1: Search is a frustration. Type in a name of a town and you get an endless list with its name in it. Even the most simple things, a name of a small town, why not first in the list it shows its center rather than the streets, pubs or hotels with that name?

2: Missing post codes. These are present in OSM search but unable to find through OsmAnd.

3: Re-routing. If for any reason I deviate from a given route it will not recalculate or works an adjoining route. This is not acceptable unless there is a hidden feature which is not defaulted.

4th: When following a route the 'my position' icon is dead in the middle of the screen. How do I set it to have it towards the bottom of it?

On the positive side OsmAnd is feature reach, GPX import is beautiful and the amout of options there are make it worth fighting to fall in love with it. But first we need to get the very basics right.

Stay safe, thank you.

[Mario Cassar]

Ok, observation 4 I found how to change it from the profile.

Progress. 

[Dmitry Prodchenko]

Hello! Thank you for the feedback.

1. We are working on improving search, fixies will be available in the next stable release. Also, you can try to search for cities or villages using Search > Address search.

2. Please provide examples of postcodes so we can test it.

3. You can try to change "Minimal distance to recalculate route" in Menu – Settings – Configure profile – Navigation settings – Route parameters.

[Mario Cassar]

Thank you indeed for the detailed information. Much appreciated.

I'm delighted to hear that the search will be improved, or to be exact, simplified. Perhaps a suggestion would be that the search prioritises on the center of the area. Example searching for a town, the first in the list shows its centre rather than a list of all its streets. Following your instructions it does get easier searching through categories but still tedious when we are used to other Satnavs.

Recalculating a route now worked for me after reducing the setting to 50m but I will keep testing it.

As for missing postcodes, these I encountered several while on my travels but to give you an example my own postcode is missing as well. It is BR3 3JP (UK). So now you know where I live, pop in for a coffee when close by 😊.

I want to reiterate OSMAnd is a powerful application with so much work in it. It's unbelievably detailed. However, it may put off many people if the defaults are not set right in line with the mainstream. Eventually people learn how to dive into the menu for further settings and take advantage of all its power.

Well done for the hard work.

Regards.

[Vold]

Ask the Help Desk for Help.
They will send tips.
Check-out the onboard Help.
When searching for a suburb then Enter the Name of the town, not the suburb.
In my Version Post Code work.