Google street maps misaligned in China
When I first got to Shanghai, I felt confident that I wouldn’t get lost very easily thanks to good old Google Maps, a fantastic web application and perhaps the most useful of all the iPhone apps. Indeed, it has been helpful, but there are a couple of issues. Firstly, I soon realized that when in China the iPhone was geting map data from ditu.google.cn which had only Chinese labels; on the other hand, maps.google.com.au was only showing pinyin (roman letters), and I wanted both. Happily, this seemed to change after I was there a while, and last time I checked the iPhone had both pinyin and 中文 labels on the streets.
The other problem is larger and more annoying: The street maps aren’t aligned with the satellite view or the GPS coordinates. This means that when using the GPS feature on the phone, the blue dot is actually about 500m away from your real location. This leads, as you can imagine, to a lot of guessing and mistakes.
I assumed that this was a temporary glitch and somebody would notice and fix it, but not so. Searching Google yielded no information. I got to wondering about it again today, though, thinking there must be more to it. After some searching, all I was able to find was a tiny snippet in a forum post 58 pages into a thread: ” Most maps available for China are misaligned by ~300-600m.” The poster claimed this was a government regulation.
I couldn’t find any confirmation of this, and besides, I’ve seen Chinese cars with GPS in action. Can anyone else explain why the Google maps data provided by Mapabc in China is off by such a large amount and nobody, apparently, can do anything about it?
I noticed this too. I doubt that it’s a government issue, since http://map.sogou.com (a Chinese site, no less) doesn’t have any difficulty lining up streets with satellite imagery. Egg on Google’s face, to be sure!
I just came across your article and wanted to let you know I’m pretty sure it IS a government issue. I ran into this same problem trying to find a map pack for my handheld Garmin GPS as well as using Google Maps.
From what I’ve gathered, although many people have GPSs here, it seems that the government won’t provide any non-Chinese company with accurate maps. Which is why the Chinese in-car and handheld GPSs along with Google Maps clones work great while others do not.
Thanks for the confirmation. It drives me crazy, because it’s so close to being fantastically useful, yet ruined for no good reason. I get lost enough – or get suspicious of taxi drivers enough – that I’d be using this all the time. Now there’s so much guesswork involved. What’s confusing is that Google seem to source the map data from a Chinese company, Mapabc, anyway.
I have noticed, however, that the map data on OpenStreetMaps is correct, GPS-wise. I’ve downloaded the Shanghai maps into my iPhone using OffMaps, an app for offline map browsing. This works with GPS perfectly – great – but the quality of the maps is extremely poor for Shanghai. Sometimes it works to at least get your bearing and then switch over to Google maps.
I Had the same problem during my trip of Macau > HongKong > Shenzhen > Zhuhai > Macau. My GPS was working fine in Macau & Hongkong, but once I crossed the border of Hong Kong – Shenzhen, I began noticing the location showing on the GPS was few hundreds meters away from where I was suppose to be. I thought the GPS was mulfunctioning. But when I later crossed border of Zhuhai back to Macau, my GPS reading became accurate again. So it’s clear that the map of mainland China has been manipulated.
The maps on Iphone are misaligned but work perfectly well on E71 anywhere in China. This is in my opinion phone specific.
In Nokia E71 both the satellite & maps mode are showing correct location.
In Iphone 3Gs, only the satellite mode shows correct location.
I have both tested, side by side, in South China. In HK and Macau Iphone does work correctly.
For Iphone, not great because maps really help here in China (and for that I turn to my E71).
weird, google maps on windows mobile works really well. the maps are all aligned. i just switched to iphone recently and was shocked about this as well. the thing is the one in windows mobile is localized, meaning theres no pinyin or english.. its pure chinese maybe thats why its more accurate
I have to have my iPhone (with screwed Google map), my Nokia N97 (with good Google map and Nokia Maps) and to make doubly sure Google is not screwed altogether for whatever reason on the day, my China GPS built into my Honda Odyssey. The car is too big to put in my pocket, so when I am really screwed with the 500m offset in the iPhone then I put my SIM card into my N95 which has always worked perfectly!!!
Across the border – iPhone works perfectly!!!!!
This is really pi&&ing me off with the lack of responses from Google.
For iPhone,if you want to solve the China maps misalignment issue. Try
ABCMaps applciation.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abcmaps/id379582726?mt=8
In China, the built-in iPhone Maps application is distorted and will
show you a position that is 300-1000m randomly from reality. The
ABCMaps application is to align the maps to the real place.
ABCMaps is Chinese only applcation now. However, it is so easy to use.
So even you can not read Chinese you can use it also. The English
version will come out in the future.
ABCMaps is upgraded to version 1.30, English support added.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abcmaps/id379582726?mt=8
Find out where you are really in China. If you travel in China,
sometimes you will be troubled by China maps offset. The ABCMaps application is to align automatically the maps to the real place .
If available in your area, real-time traffic conditions will be
displayed over the road as color-coded lines by click “Traffic” button.
What’s New In Version 1.30
1. English support added
2. Traditional Chinese support added
3. Small bug fix for iOS 3.0
WHEN I CHECK MY CURRENT LOCATION ON MY IPHONE, “MAP VIEW” SHOWS 500-600 METERS FAR AWAY FROM MY ACTUAL LOCATION, BUT “SATELLITE VIEW” SHOWS THE EXACT POINT SUCCESSFULLY. IF YOU SEARCH FOR A DIRECTION, GOOGLE MAPS GIVES YOU THE DIRECTIONS ACCORDING TO MAP VIEW, SO YOU CAN GET DISAPPOINTING RESULT. BECAUSE IF YOU ARE ON A HIGHWAY, CAN SHOW YOUR LOCATION IN OTHER PLACES AND CALCULATES THE DRIVING DIRECTIONS VERY DIFFERENTLY. THIS WILL MAKE YOU IN TROUBLE