Navigating through China, part 3: Check for easy way out

As I have explained in the previous post, Maps.app just would not do it for me. While it has it's uses, I needed something more fitting my purpose.

The next logical step was to look for some free navigation apps.

There were 4 apps that I checked out:

1. 
   
2. ABCMaps Free app created in China. It claims to fix that annoying positioning error in Google Maps and it actually does that. But, sadly, it does not do anything else. All that you can get from it is your accurate position on the map — no routes, no address search, just current location. While it can be useful, limited functionality makes it useless to me.
3. Mapbar This app is free and made in China as well. Sadly, there's nothing else I can say about it as it fails to load any map images. Well, sometimes it loads part of the map, but that's about all you get from it. Search function would look promising, but it crashes the app as soon as I press 'Search' button, making it useless as well. Which is sad because this app uses Chinese maps from Mapbar.com, which are sometimes better detailed than Google Maps.
4. OpenMaps This is a free app with some premium features. One of these is ability to download maps for offline use and the second one is route planner. Positioning is pretty accurate, but there is a major drawback: This app uses OpenStreetMap maps, which are almost useless in China. The maps lack even major roads and much of the addresses you can find with Google maps are also missing.
5. MotionX GPS Lite This is a free version of a paid app.While it has no routing capabilities or search functions worth mention, there is one feature that sets it apart from many of the free GPS apps out there. This app can use Google maps, OpenStreetMap or Microsoft Bing maps. I have already addressed the problems with Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. Now the Bing maps are quite accurate and detailed and – unlike Google Maps – have no positioning errors. The main shortcomings of the app are it's lack of routing, limited number of waypoints, POIs and routes you can save in the free version (said limit makes these features useless) and the need for data connection.

None of these apps were able to provide all the features that I needed, so I had to look for other solutions.