Best gps for in China use

[bikerdoc]

Adjust your settings to "avoid tolls", and your GPS will steer you away from highways.
cheers

I could write a thesis on this subject and have almost done so over the years at more shall I say GPS and smartphone specific websites and forums, so I won't regurgitate too much of what I have partly written elsewhere, under another pseudonym. Also I'm writing this quickly as I have done my dash on this subject over the years and was a mod on another content specific website, so enough already.

"Avoid tolls"
There is a downside to such a selection in mainland Ch!na, and that is depending on departure and destination when trying to navigate towards a destination (e.g. "where to" using the GPS to navigate from point A to point B), "avoiding tolls" will also provide routing that may deviate from the highway at different points where the map data has tolls on those portions of the highway that are affected. Meaning that sometimes the route calculated will divert of a main road or highway to avoid a toll etc. This is because there have been up until recent times, many tolls on provincial, district and city highways and roads, aside from and separate to the Expressways (Gao Su Gong Lu). Many of the tolls are no longer in existence or used, so it may depend on what GPS software one uses and how current the map is within that software. Some GPS software also allows other options in terms of how routes are calculated e.g. shorter route versus faster time to name just two options. Different devices and different GPS applications can make all the difference.

I have been using GarminXT for Windows based smartphone/PPC (3 x HTC's) for many years and have tried Route66, Tomtom, NaviGo and iGo in China for quite some time. I liked Mapking very much and still have it loaded on my HTC's but the maps haven't been updated for 4-5+ years. I offered to help the company that produces MapKing (MapAsia) several years ago with rendering up more accurate polygons, correct some co-ordinates and map "farts" and what not, but the company weren't that interested. Garmin via there Ch!nese partner Unistrong, have been particularly abrasive and in the early days, somewhat misleading in their offerings in the mainland Ch!na market. Safe to say, that GarminXT (no matter the platform) is not supported on smartphones as Unistrong only sell dedicated Garmin navigator units and maps to those units, and primarily those manufactured for the Ch!nese mainland market when referenced to it. It is absolutely possible to use the likes of GarminXT on smartphones and the days of offset maps is long gone... *winks* even in mainland China.

It's actually illegal to do any mapping of any kind in Ch!na without proper authorisation etc, and that even goes as far as saving waypoints and POI's or favourite places using a GPS, which might explain MapAsia's reluctance to work with a private individual on their MapKing mapping.

AFAIK Google maps, AutoNavi and a few others do not provide triangulation just by using satellites (which are free and don't rely on any data from a telephony company), instead they use aGPS which is assisted GPS using a data connection via a telephpony company (e.g. either Ch!na Mobile or Ch!na Unicom) and therefore one accumulates data charges, meaning to use the map to navigate and move about on can cost money. Google maps in the past also operated more like paper maps than a true interactive GPS. Even some of the aforementioned GPS software I have used can use a combination of the two methods e.g. Route66, where both data from a telephony company by pinging off of cellular site/towers and satellite data are used and combined to give better accuracy rather than triangulation relied on with pure satellite only GPS, though this method does no incur data charges.

GPRS and GPS are completely different standards, and should not be confused. The latter deals with satellite signals while the former, GPRS deals with packets of data.

I'm now playing with Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and Android JB 4.1.2 and GXT (street p!lot). That's all I can say about that.

If it were me and I was a noob in Ch!na I'd simply look to buy one of the many dedicated GPS devices, as the prices dropped out the arse end long ago. Once upon a time there weren't many choices and those that were available in Ch!na were overpriced for what one got. Now though with all the copyright violations and so on, better devices with more options can be had for a quarter to a third the price of say, a Garmin Nuvi 200 (a basic as model which used to retail for >CNY2000 not that long ago).