Originally Posted by
YVR Cockroach
I will have to read the thread but the immediate issue I noticed is that where Google Maps places location is mismatched from its own maps by ~400m in this instance.
Google as a search is just referring to Tripadvisor for the most part.
As for satellite photos, the major non-specific attractions can be easily identified. Whether thay are open for visits or not is another thing.
The gist of it is that Google Maps was almost completely useless when that thread first started 6 years ago, and it's managed to become even more useless since because they are really lazy about updates (i.e. entire neighborhoods are missing). You definitely want to have Baidu or Tencent Maps on your phone, regardless of your Chinese reading comprehension ability. And, you can supplement this with something a little less robust (but, still accurate) in English. By "less robust", I mean you're not going to get floor by floor details of shopping malls or airports or live feeds from bus routes, but you're also not going to get confused by features you really don't want or need in a map app (e.g. booking airplane tickets).
My current less robust option is Organic Maps, which is an ad free clone of one of the others we discuss in the Google Maps thread.