Entering GPS Coordinates in BlackBerry 10 Maps

When I upgraded from Bold 9900 to Q10, one drawback I immediately noticed was that there was no option for entering GPS Coordinates in BlackBerry 10 Maps. I was a regular user of BB Maps and I live in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, all addresses here are not mapped to GPS coordinates and thus I cannot enter my destination based on address alone.

 

After trying everything and searching on internet, I couldn’t find any solution. As a final resort I contacted Dear Berry of crackberry.com, the conclusion of our discussion is as follows, my intention of putting it here is to help others, who are trying to find a solution for the same issue:

 

Question: I live in Riyadh, KSA and the only way I can use navigation on BB10 Maps here is by entering GPS coordinates of the destination location. Recently I shifted to Q10 and I couldn’t find any way to use the navigation.

 

DearBerry:

• This functionality is not available on the BlackBerry 10 version of BBMaps.
• A work around is to use the following website to translate addresses into GPS coordinates and vice versa: http://www.gps-coordinates.net/ 
• 3rd party apps can be used, like BeMaps, ViewRanger etc

 

Based on that I tried several navigational apps on my Q10 and here is the result:

I tried ViewRanger Outdoors GPS and Maps, I couldn’t find any way to use its navigation feature, I tried to enter coordinates, I tried to search local places (there were no results) and I tried if I can choose a location manually on the map but the navigation didn’t start. There are no pre-defined routes available near my location as well.

Then I tried Navfree, it has many features and it is working quite well. It doesn’t give alternative routes so that’s a feature missing as compared to Google Maps and the traffic feature is not working here but I am able to navigate based on coordinates and it even supports foursquare locations. The only major problem is that its interface is not very user friendly for Q10 because of the smaller screen size and its relatively slower.

I also tried OsmAnd and it seems to be working fine as well, it also search location based on coordinates but its routing didn’t seem very optimized, it took me from a longer way although a much much shorter way was available.

Google Maps has the maximum number of features and it supports coordinates as well, it doesn’t support foursquare locations and for that I would use Navfree. So my 1st choice at the moment is Google Maps.

All above can be handy alternatives but they cannot beat the built-in support BB10 Maps enjoy, like I cannot open a contact and just navigate to his location and BB10 Maps interface is optimized for smaller screens.

 

I have asked this on Support Forums of BlackBerry as well, you can visit it on: http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/BlackBerry-Q10/Entering-GPS-Coordinates-in-BlackBerry-10-Maps/td-p/3008796

 

-urShadow