Originally Posted by
pushmyredbutton
Google maps is alright in China, but I get the feeling that adding infrastructure and public transport options isn't a priority for the team since Google services are natively blocked. For example, Google maps traffic info used to be quite reliable, but now it's almost non-existent since it uses crowd-sourced data that simply doesn't exist.
Google is siphoning a lot of data from Chinese Android phones despite the GFW. You can confirm this by running a packet dump while your phone is on WiFi. If you are an Ingress player you can also check out where the local Android phone users are hanging out (even though they don't play Ingress at all), so clearly Google location collection is working just fine in China.
My suspicion is on some sort of a come-back plan as the live traffic info went down around the same time that Android push notifications came back up through the GFW. There was a time when you can't get any Android push notifications without a VPN while now you don't need a VPN at all.
Haven't used Apple Maps previously, but can anyone confirm if it's functionality is indeed better then Google?
Apple Maps uses AutoNavi (aka amap or 高德) in China which is one of the best maps available. Personally it's been much quicker at picking up new roads/road conditions in Shanghai than Baidu.