top bar to bring up a Maps-style, click-to-advance preview of upcoming turns, which we'll detail in just a bit.
Main Map Screen
The main map screen shows your progress in a three-quarter overhead view, with your anticipated route in blue and your current location marked by a bold blue arrow. Zooming in and out is handled automatically: farther out when you're speeding along, closer up when you're on slower streets. If you have any Layers enabled, or have run a search to show certain points in particular, they'll show up here. If you've scrolled away to check out something, you'll see the big blue Navigation icon in the lower-left. Press it, and you'll zoom back to where you are.
Bottom Time/Road Location Bar
The very bottom shows how much time is left in your route, along with the road you're currently on (though I've blocked that out for privacy in this screenshot). Notice the tiny light to the left of the countdown timer? It's telling you about the traffic outlook for the rest of your trip. Green is good, red is bad, and if you click on the time or light, you'll get a full view of the traffic outlook, with road highlights and markers for construction.
Press the Top Bar to Activate a Step by Step Map Mode
As noted above, pressing on the top bar with your current action in large text, activates a step-by-step mode that will seem familiar from Maps, the difference being the perspective. Arrows will show up, and you can press them to get a preview of what you'll be doing next. This is helpful when you've got some time before you head into a city during rush hour, or other situations where you don't know the terrain.
So that's a pretty helpful close-up view of what's going on up ahead. Even more helpful? Hit the Street View icon, and you'll see exactly what you're supposed to do—on a real street picture:
Street View Preview
Actually, that's just a Street View preview. Click that cute little "Street View Man" and you'll get full access to explore where you're going to be turning—though, really, it's someone else who's not driving who should be looking this up.
Street View
pictures, and can also show banks, restaurants, and other car-friendly spots. Hit the Menu button while in Navigation, and you'll see an option for Layers, among others.
Bank, Food, and Arial Picture Layers
Navigation Menu
What else lurks in the Menu offerings? "Exit Navigation" and "Mute" do what you'd guess, and "More" offers some helpful stuff—including a direct path to changing your destination while inside Navigation.
Taking a Detour with Navigation
"Search" does something pretty great. Rather than just pulling up a result and offering to get you there, it puts anything matching your search term. So if you needed to find a shoe repair spot on your cross-country trek, just search out "shoe" or "footwear" (or both, actually), and you'll see every point along the way. If you click one of the results, Navigation will get you there, then get you right back on your trip. Or you could just find some fast food.
Pick a Different Route
Choosing Different Routes
"Route Info" is also misleadingly simple, as it's more about route control. You get a big, traffic-colored overview of your trip. Hit the gears-style icon to access the "Avoid Highways" and "Avoid Tolls" options. The third button with the arrows and marker? That lets you choose which route you'll take. Google doesn't always have a host of options, but you can sometimes augment Google's raw data with your own knowledge that, for example, you never want to drive past the elementary school shortly after 3 p.m. To change your route, you can tap one of the gray-and-colored routes on the map, or select from the columns up top listing the main roads taken for each.
Car Mode
Android's Maps and Navigation tools are pretty darned handy, but getting to them while you're driving requires pressing small icons or fiddling with controls you shouldn't be fiddling with in a moving object. That's what car mode, or "Car Home," is for. If you bought an accessory car dock for your phone, Car Home should launch automatically when you slot your phone into it. Otherwise, you pull up the "Car Home" app in your app tray. The layout and button options are made for driving—big buttons, an emphasis on voice search. Rather than punching up a contact and dialing it, you should hit "Voice Search" and say "Call Tim Bronson at Home" to start a call to the number you assigned to. There are links to your music, a phone dialer, and a few other apps on a screen you can swipe over to. But the main feature of Car Home (starting in Android 2.2) is that it stays up. If you hit your Home or Back buttons, you end up back at Car Home, not the Home Screen. The way out is to hit the "Exit car mode" button, or pull down your Notification bar and select the little nub that informs you that Car Home is running.
Maps and Navigation are some of Google's most frequently updated apps, so always be on the lookout for new stuff when you're looking for directions or neat stuff nearby.